


1. Welcome to the Admiral's Reserve

by AdmYrrek



Series: The Nation of Ownteli [1]
Category: Equideow | Howrse (Video Game), Original Work
Genre: 17th Century, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Age of Sail, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Alternate Universe - Historical, Anthropomorphic, Biopunk, Bisexual Male Character, Blasphemy, Dragons, Dwarves, Furry, Gay Male Character, Gen, Horses, Multiple Religion & Lore Sources, Multiverse, Navy, Nexus - Freeform, Pirates, Politics, Religion, Religious Discussion, Sailing, Time Travel, Trans Character, Unicorns, Worldbuilding, draft horses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-02-23 03:55:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 44,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23438659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdmYrrek/pseuds/AdmYrrek
Summary: A 17th Century Irish pirate arrives as prisoner in a strange world of talking animals and beasts that walk as men. Sure he has died at the hands of the accursed British and been damned to hell for his sins or else had his soul stolen away to the Land of the Fey, the pirate grapples with the strange things around him. Among these are talking ponies, clean water that can be summoned from the walls, food aplenty for all, the demand that he play jockey to tamed pookas, and a demon cat captain who sees no sin in buggery.
Series: The Nation of Ownteli [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1686145
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	1. Down the mountain to fetch a pirate

**Author's Note:**

> This story's setting is based VERY loosely on the browser game Howrse.
> 
> I have used the mechanics of the game to flesh out a setting and the dynamics of the community to rough out a political and social structure. After that, it is entirely populated by my own original characters and their antics within that world I see suggested by the game. Some of my "avatar" characters are versions of the game's "divine" horses to whom I have ascribed personalities.
> 
> For more information, read the series summary and notes. Each chapter will have specific warnings as needed.
> 
> I plan to update weekly on Thursdays.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every citizen in the Nation of Ownteli knows two things: Horses are everything and pirates will be punished. Severely. What very few know is that the edges of the world are rather thin, meaning people from other worlds and times have a habit of slipping through.
> 
> Eric, owner/operator of the Admiral's Reserve, knows all of these things, however, and intends to make good use of that knowledge. When an old navy friend from another world sends word he has found a potentially useful pirate, Eric sees it as an opportunity and a reason to leave his mountain-top ranch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first chapter of seven I already have written that are collecting dust.
> 
> Estimated reading time: 15 mins

“Hurry!” squawked the parrot. “Slow cat!”

“Flamboyant feather duster!” the leopon lycan hissed back.

The damned, demanding bird had insisted on Eric's attention ever since it arrived. Like now, as it picked at a seam on Clío's saddle.

“GET!” Eric bodily shooed the parrot. None too gently, either.

The affronted bird cocked its head, ruffled itself, then hop-flapped to alight on the unicorn's massive horn. But Clío was having none of it. The old matron tossed her noble, silver-scored head, making a dangerous area-hazard of the four-foot twisted ebony spike that grew from her forehead. This deftly dislodging the bird.

Once the messenger macaw had settled itself on the arena railing beside them, Clío turned her head slightly and cocked an impatient ear in Eric's direction.

Well? Were they going or weren't they?

“Yeah, alright,” Eric conceded as he hoisted himself up into the saddle on the big black mare's back. “We're going. C'mon Rudy.”

Rudy, the little dun pack pony, followed along beside and slightly behind Clío as Eric squeezed her forward. The little gelding was drawn along by the lead rope wrapped around the horn of the mare's impractically ornate saddle.

“Bird! Go tell your master we're coming!”

The parrot dove from the darkness of the covered arena's interior and out into the sunlight beyond. It flew above and tracked the lycan astride the big unicorn in their trek through the ranch, occasionally offering bisyllabic insults from the sky. Eric ignored it. When Clío started down the sloping path of the cliffside road down off the mountainside plateau ranch, he leaned back in the saddle. The parrot, meanwhile, abandoned its insults and winged away north towards the port city below.

The lycan didn’t particularly like leaving his mountain, but at least the view was nice. The ever-growing port city of Havmunn sprawled under the sheer cliffs of his little nook in the Briste Pláta Range. The city—and it was a city, despite what some of the residents of the nation’s capital of Hesthjem seemed to think—was always in motion. Bustling and active.

Havmunn was the northernmost port for seagoing trade on the continent occupied by the Nation of Ownteli. Its docks were packed with ships from the nation (and occasionally alien other locations). The prows and sails of the ships—entering the sheltered bay to bring trade goods, or leaving through the protected passageways through the breakwaters for parts unknown—were like a constantly moving horizon of clouds. Or a flock of restless birds ready to scatter onto new adventures.

Beyond the city was the bright expanse of the sea and the horizon that went on forever. The retired navy officer couldn’t think of a better view. As much as he loved his mountainside retirement ranch, Eric missed the sea. He missed his ship and his crews and the salty wind in his fur. But if he were to go back to the sea, he would miss his horses and his ranch too, he reminded himself. 

The horses of Ownteli were not a thing to miss. 

Eric patted Clío’s thick neck heartily, then extended his claws and reached down her neck to give her a scratch right behind her ear where she liked it. She quirked the scratched ear back in his direction severely and huffed. Shouldn't he get back to doing his part in this whole affair?

Eric grinned at the grandmotherly equine scolding. After tucking his tail down along one leg, he leaned back in the saddle even more to help Clío balance on the steep downward path.

For a while, Eric was content to enjoy the sensory pleasures of the ride. The warmth of the sun on his tawny, spotted coat and the deliberate rocking of his hips as Clío took one careful step after another down the mountain-side plateau to Havmunn was pleasant. The sound of rhythmic clopping hooves and shifting skree from the descent just covering the distant but growing roar of the surf. The warm-milk-and-cut-grass smell of the horses’ breath mingled with the growing tang of their lathering sweat and the first hints of industry and fishmongers down in the city below… 

The city below. Like any port city, Havmunn was alive with activity, sounds, and smells. Most especially smells, particularly for lycans who boasted olfactory prowess well beyond what humans, dwarves, or the other furless sorts could claim.

As they descended the sloping path down towards the city, Eric tried to sift through the smells wafting up to meet him. Fish. The tide. Tar and pitch from the docks. Livestock, both living and in the process of getting dead. Bread baking and meat roasting. The stench of a populace largely too poor to obtain, or otherwise prevented from using, the nation’s spectacular alchemical technology, which easily dealt with most health and hygiene complaints of living bodies in tight quarters.

And—since it was a port town frequented by the Ownteli Navy—there was the ever-present smell of rotting death. That is, the smell of pirates. Specifically, the caged pirates set out for the ever-present gulls.

Eric cast a glance to the far western edge of the city. He couldn’t see it at this distance, but he knew there was a grizzly forest growing on the western arm of the bay. Most of the trade ships coming into the city sailed by that narrow warning strip of rocky land to enter the bay and reach the docks. No one who came to Havmunn could claim ignorance of piracy’s fruits.

Fat gulls and a less than fair wind.

Pirates were also what brought Eric to the city today. Or rather, the message a friend of his had sent him via the parrot about a specific pirate. Feline eyes went to the ships and pupils narrowed to sharpen the distant image. The excitement of commanding ships in the Ownteli Navy had been undeniable, and he missed it, but there were good reasons he had decided to retire. Mostly to do with pirates. Specifically, the ever-changing politics that made people into pirates at a moment's notice, and what the Navy did to them.

But, no time for thoughts of that now. They were descending into the city, and the reclusive Lord Admiral, Steward of the Briste Pláta Battleflats, had a certain austere majesty to maintain.

Eric sat up straight, tall, and smart in the saddle. He fixed his ears and his whiskers forward, and set his expression to what the dwarves often called his “judgemental cat face.” A haughty angle to his tufted chin and an occasionally-twitching tail tip finished the pose. 

It wasn’t everyday that the retired Lord Admiral came down off his mountain, so Eric’s presence drew attention immediately upon entering the fringes of the city. Townsfolk looked up and stared. 

It was understandable. Not only was he a lycan—rare at not even 10 percent of the population, despite Ownteli’s grand entirely-not-a-dictator chancellor being one—he was an unusual one. Maned like a lion, yet spotted like a pard. Also, he was notably almost naked. While this was not uncommon for lycans in general, for someone of his rank to be bare chested and wearing nothing more than one of his fancier kilts, a navy uniform capelet, a brace of military pistols, a senior officer’s saber, and riding gauntlets on all limbs was to be scandalously unclothed.

Those who were in the Lord Admiral’s path made sure to hurry out of it, and those nearby either bowed or scurried away. Though there were, of course, no peasants in the _obviously_ egalitarian Ownteli society, the peasants said nothing as he passed, and many “Good morning, M’lord!”s came from the more colorful and well dressed merchant classes. 

As he passed, however, there were always whispers among the pairs or packs of peasants and peddlers of this or that. And they were always the same.

“Is that…”

“Why do you suppose…”

“I’ve heard tell…” 

“He lives up there…”

“...Dwarves and dragons and who knows what else…”

“...my Joey took his colt up there once…” 

“...know McGreggor’s plow horse came from that’un’s herd?”

“...warhorses. The lot of them!”

“...heard they have beasts and oddities of all sorts up there…”

One of Eric’s ears tracked and swiveled to follow the chatter. Humans never seemed to realize how good a lycan’s hearing was. Or at least feline lycans. But, then again, most humans had no knowledge of lycans besides the nonsense myths of the cross breeding of beasts with humans or early blood magic experiments by alchemists gone mad. Eric ignored them all, keeping his austere air of affluence and authority.

The packed dirt paths that cut through the fringes of the city gave way first to haphazard cobblestones, and then to tightly-fitting bricks, as they got deeper into the city. Clío’s dwarven-steel shoes rang in rhythmic peels as she marched steadily. 

Just as her rider had drawn attention, so too did Clío. The now-bustling throngs of tradespeople parted before her massive horn and gave her wide-eyed looks from the walkways. It was not that unicorns were an oddity in Ownteli overall, or Havmunn specifically, but Clío just had a bearing about her that drew attention.

Clíodhna—or “Clío” around the barn—was an ancient, proud old mare. Silver had long since crept into her jet tail, mane, coat, feathers, and muzzle. The pits above her eyes were deep and her belly hung low from the hundreds of foals she’d borne in her centuries of life. None of that had dimmed the shine of her eyes, flattened the curve of her neck, or lowered her banner tail. She was the ruling matron at the Reserve and she and everyone else knew it.

For a vainer unicorn, the attention of the crowd would have picked her feet up a bit higher and clopped them down more decisively. Clío felt no need to show off, however. For a more pedestrian steed, the crowd’s attention would have inspired nervous dancing. Like what Rudy was up to behind them. The little pony was not used to this level of bustle or the attention.

With her ears momentarily flattened against her thick, arching neck, Clío swept her head—and her considerable horn, forcing the closest onlookers to duck for their own safety—back and snatched the lead rope attached to Rudy’s halter in her teeth. She bodily hauled the nervous, diminutive pony up alongside her and nipped reprovingly at his shoulder, all without missing a stride. She knickered at the smaller equine to settle. Few disobeyed her equine orders.

Eric quietly congratulated her handling of the situation, to which she huffed with one ear back in his direction. Unicorns couldn’t speak, of course, but the chiding—don’t make me do your job for you—was apparent enough.

Clío knew the way to the docks well enough, and soon they arrived at the sprawling port. The message carried by Captain Aaron Johns’ annoying parrot—current alighting on a light pole nearby—had not detailed the exact location of the ship, but it was easy enough to find. The alien ship stood out in so many ways subtle and obvious from the native Ownteli ships. 

From the cut of its sails, to the odd prow-to-stern bowing, to the regular “windows” cut into its side, to the sheer size and depth of it, it was obvious that the “HMS Fortune’s Ranger”—something Eric saw proclaimed from the ship’s side that most Ownteli natives would not notice, let alone be able to read—was not a local vessel. Ownteli ships tended to be broad, shallow-drafted things built for speed and maneuverability. They navigated the nation’s coastlines, either to ship goods quickly, chase those goods, or chase the chasers. All but the smallest ships sported a massive, arching bow to which pegasi could be harnessed to augment the rowers and—more recently—sails. Since nothing of economic relevance existed beyond the continent, Ownteli’s navy had no need—or even concept—of deep-drafted long-haul ships carrying massive armaments such as the exotic “Ranger.”

Just as the ship wasn’t from “here,” per se, it wasn’t from “now” either. As far as Eric understood the timeline that Captain Aaron Johns occupied, he was part of the Britsish Empire in the year of the Tyr Lords 1600 and something. Such that he had explained it in the past, Aaron’s time was one where his people—or his father’s people, anyway—were the rulers of the seas and controlled most of the known lands. His government had a similar ruthless approach to pirates to Eric’s.

The local dockmen were gawking at the elegant carving of the figurehead of a woman on the Ranger’s prow. They scattered as the Lord Admiral arrived astride his massive black unicorn.

“Good day to you, Admiral!” Aaron called from his ship. The annoying painted parrot that had been shadowing Eric had, as if on cue, flapped up to its master’s shoulder. With the bird perched there, the human made to dismount his ship.

Aaron was a tall, fine-boned human with a long, strong stride. He had long dark brown headfur that would have been a mane reaching well below his shoulders were it not tied and tailed. His skin was pale, but not as pale as many of his crew—particularly those looking over the railing at the unicorn-mounted lycan below—and it contrasted with his otherwise dark features.

“And to you, Captain!” Eric waved as he dismounted. Clío took control of Rudy.

Aaron was uniformed in—to local eyes—an alien explosion of mismatched articles of clothing. Eric knew the dark blue and yellow outfit to be a military uniform. To the locals, however, it looked as though Aaron wore a sort of cuirass made out of heavy blue wool, had tucked his ostentatiously striped and pleated kilt up between his legs into some form of odd poofy short pants, and was wearing a fine lady’s sheer stockings and black dress shoes. 

Despite how unusual the outfit to local sensibilities, the uniform nonetheless communicated affluence if not authority. At the very least, Aaron’s official bearing was unmistakable. Those few local sailors who dared to stay at their dock work near the alien ship—dwarves, all of them—gave him a wide berth as he walked down the gangplank from his oddly tall ship.

When the human captain and the lycan retired admiral met, they clasped hands, forearm to forearm, in a masculine greeting that transcended many planes and species. They spoke in lone tones and in close proximity.

“Good to see you! It’s been too long,” Eric said, his whiskers brushing forward with attention.

“Rogue that you are, time stands still with thee as it seems that thy whiskers are no more silver than when last I saw thee.”

Eric grinned, showing leonine teeth. “Indeed not. Though, you seem to have a bit more silver in your fur. Time works differently here than for you.”

“So it does,” Aaron answered with a regretful smile. “Sadly, I do not have much of it. We must be away with the dawn tide.”

Eric’s ears flattened and he made a sort of growl in his throat. “Must you? Why?”

“I fear we may start a riot if we linger overlong,” Captain Johns said, gesturing around to the locals. While the few dwarf sailors who remained in the area continued toting items that looked far too large and heavy for them to manage and paid them no attention, the human sailors and dock denizens had fled to a safer distance. They did not hide their cautious curiosity or concern.

“And my own crew may mutiny if I force them to linger,” Aaron added, speaking for Eric’s ears alone. “Sailors are a superstitious, silly lot as a rule. Even from where they stand they have seen things that surely weigh upon their souls as outside the bounds of Christendom, more than were we but in the lands of the Saracens.”

Eric was not much familiar with the locations Aaron referenced, but he nonetheless knew an opportunity for playful ribbing when he saw one.

“Surely tales of their captain communing with beasts of myth would help your reputation?” 

Aaron eyed him.

“They tell enough stories as it is,” he said with genuine weariness in his voice. “And they certainly noticed when this one,” he said, gesturing to the preening parrot on his shoulder, “suddenly grew craftier upon passage through that storm. I would rather they not get it into their heads that I am a witch, nor that I have brought them to a land of witches, nor that I have relations with devils.”

Eric bristled his whiskers, amused. “You never took me up on that, as I recall. Had an engineer you favored at the time?”

“You mistake my meaning,” Aaron said severely in a whisper. Eric just grinned. The human cut off the potential for more flirting by shouting over his shoulder to some unseen members of his crew.

“Barker! Fitch! Fetch the prisoner! The little one. Bring him in irons!”


	2. Out of the dark to certain death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rahkus, the captured pirate, is sure he will hang for his piracy. But when he is delivered by his captors into the paws of a talking beast astride a unicorn, he isn't sure what will happen. He will surely die, of course. But how?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER: captivity, fear, prisoner bondage, captor/prisoner interaction, classism, classist behavior, dehumanizing treatment, character expecting death, 1600s-era pirate cursing, intentional rough handling
> 
> Compared to some of the things I've seen on this site, all of this is ridiculously mild and does not impact my overall rating of General Audience, but I like to offer warnings anyway.
> 
> Estimated reading time: 13 mins

Rahkus looked up when he heard the creak of the ladders in the dark. He couldn’t see anything—brigs were usually in the bellies of ships, and this one was pitch black as a hangman’s heart—but he knew the damned British navymen were coming down. To get him.

They’d pulled him out of the main brig cells that held the rest of his crew yesterday. Or, at least, Rahkus thought it was yesterday. Hard to tell time without light. But it felt like it was yesterday. It was at least before the storm.

And now they were in port. Couldn’t be London yet. Too warm and too soon for that. But they’d separated him—and only him—from his crew. And now they were in port. That could only mean it was time. He was to hang.

The two navymen brought the warm glow of a lantern and the chill of impending death. Rahkus shivered as one unlocked his cell.

“C’mere Runt!”

Rahkus was hauled up backwards by his wrists and his tailed hair. His mates across the way began hurling insults at the navymen. The one with the lantern who was not putting new irons on Rahkus’ wrists and feet insulted them back. But freebooters could outswear any navyman if only because of practice.

“Bloody sassenach!” 

“Yer mum’s a hoor an’ yer king buggers ‘em!”

“They make ye taste yer cap’n’s daughter yet, ye monkey sucker?”

“Oi! Stick yer month’s mite up yer arse!”

The navyman binding him pushed Rahkus out of the cell and towards the ladder while the other kicked at the cage of insulters. As they passed, Rahkus’ mates shifted from insults to the well wishing words of those seeing a dead man walk. Captain Bolbec was last and nodded in his gentry way as they passed his cell.

“G’well Rahkus, lad.”

Rahkus tried, but failed, to keep his voice level in answer to his last command. 

“Aye, C-Cap’n.”

* * *

Eric watched as Aaron’s men balked at the top of the gangplank. Even from this distance, he could see the whites of the uniformed humans’ eyes, and the single eye of their prisoner, as they stared down at him.

“Why delay you!?” Aaron shouted at them.

The guards did not immediately move. Eric grinned and lashed his tail as he approached their captain, amused to see what little color remained in them drain from their sea-reddened pale faces.

“What holds you? Come! AT ONCE!” Aaron shouted.

That got them moving. The two men in uniform recovered admirably, given that they were surely seeing many new and, to them, impossible things. From what Eric knew of Aaron’s plane, unicorns were mythical, and creatures resembling lycans were monsters used to scare children into behaving.

The guards half pushed, half dragged a tiny, manacled figure between them. When they reached the dock, stopped some distance away, and stood him up between them, Eric could see that the prisoner was barely the size of a human child. But musculature and facial hair showed he was indeed a man, even if a tiny one. His one good eye—the right one, the left being ruined by a long jagged scar that ran the length of his face—was wide and tracked every move Eric made.

“This is the prisoner of whom I spoke, Admiral,” Aaron said loudly. Out of the corner of his eye, Eric caught sight of an eavesdropping dockworker. The dwarf hurried off when she was noticed.

“Humpf,” Eric huffed, playing along with the impromptu song and dance. “Let’s have a look at him then.”

Eric closed the distance towards the tiny human. The pirate was short, even shorter than the ubiquitous dwarves, and looked distinctly underfed. This made his look of wide-eyed terror at Eric’s approach all the more pitiful. It was only because the guards held onto him that he did not retreat as Eric roughly took his red-furred chin in one paw and forced his head up.

The leopon lycan made a show of inspecting the human prisoner, just as he might when examining a new horse. First, he checked the man’s one good, green eye. It was still wide with fear—the man stunk of it, among other things—but was clear, save for some yellowing of the eye’s white. Likely a minor tropical infection of some sort, Eric reasoned. Sailors got that here. No reason why sailors from other planes wouldn’t too.

Next, Eric forced the man’s mouth open and looked at his teeth. They weren’t great, but they were at least all there. Their condition suggested the poor diet of the destitute, and possibly a brawl or two rather than advanced age or significant disease. Not surprising for a pirate.

At this close proximity, Eric could almost taste the man. He reeked. He was dirty and disheveled. His head- and facial fur—which would have been a bright orange-red were it clean—was knotted and mangy and almost certainly harbored furborne pests. Pirates, regardless which plane they came from, were not well known for their attention to hygiene. Similarly, navy brigs, regardless of the navy’s commanding government or what plane they came from, were never pleasant places. And who knew how long this little pirate had been in Aaron’s hold. Eric glanced down. The manacles around the pirate’s wrists and ankles had begun to wear red patches on his skin, but they had not yet gotten to the point of being raw or festering. Perhaps three or four days then.

The most striking thing about the human, aside from his height, was that most of his largely exposed, otherwise fair skin was festooned with bright blue tattoos. But they were more than tattoos. When Eric ran his paws down the length of the tiny man’s arms and legs, feeling the muscles beneath the skin as the next step in the inspection process, he found the intricate knotwork designs had literally been carved into the man’s skin as well as dyed. It must have been quite a process getting them done.

Lastly, Eric circled the tiny human—and his handlers—to examine him from all angles. All three humans seemed to stiffen and go even whiter than they had been, were that possible.

“Alright,” Eric said as he finished his round and stepped away from the tiny man, careful to include a hint of disgust in his unnecessarily loud tone. “I’ll take him. But he won’t last long in the mines.”

“I thank you for taking custody of the villain. And ensuring that he pays for his crimes,” Aaron answered in a similar volume.

Aaron made a jerking gesture towards the guard holding onto the tiny pirate, indicating he hand the prisoner off. The guard didn’t look overly eager to approach Eric but obeyed nonetheless, then hurried off after the lycan had snatched the lead chain. 

Eric pulled the little man along and fetched a long chain from one of Rudy’s saddlebags. He made a show of re-chaining the man to a D-ring on the right side of Clío’s collar, leaving the little man just enough length to walk along at her hip.

With that and a smart salute, Eric mounted Clío and turned her, forcing the hobbled little man to stumble around awkwardly or else be stepped on by the large mare whose back was higher than his head.

“Fair winds, Captain,” he bid with a wave.

“And to you, Admiral,” Aaron said with another, sharper salute.

Without any further communication with Captain Johns, Eric squeezed Clío forward back to town. Tied as he was, the tiny pirate was forced to try to keep pace alongside the comparatively massive black unicorn on Eric’s right. Rudy paced along less nervously on the left.

The leg irons on the pirate’s feet prevented him from taking normal length strides even for his short legs. He was forced into a sort of shuffling, jangling jog to keep up with the brisk pace Eric was demanding of Clío. The sight and sound was both attention-grabbing and familiar to the denizens of Havmunn. Piracy was well known in any seagoing trade community, and particularly so in this town, so a pirate in irons led away to some sort of punishment by a member of the navy was similarly common-place.

The retired and reclusive Lord Admiral coming down off his mountain and leading the condemned away while astride his war unicorn himself was less common, however. The unique nature of the prisoner also drew the curious attention of the townsfolk. The fact they were making their way through the city—and specifically not to the garrison and the gaol—was also likely of interest to the onlookers.

As before when he came through the town, Eric heard the not-so-hushed gossip of the merchants and other city dwellers in their wake as they passed.

“...to the mines, I heard.”

“But what would he…” 

“Surely M’Lord would have sent someone to manage such a task?”

“Why’s ‘e take such interest, ye reckon?”

“I hear…”

“...a pirate.”

“Serves’im right then. Blast pirates!”

“Makin’ life ‘arder fer simple, honest folk like…” 

“...but the l’il blighter won’t last a week in…”

“Who cares? Pirates’re…”

“Should ‘ang ‘em all, says I.”

“Wot’cher think the dwarves’ll do wit’ that painted un, aye?”

“Or th’wyrms?”

Eric pointedly ignored the townsfolk. He had a reputation of aloofness and he didn’t feel like disabusing them of that “knowledge.” Nor the gossip of his prisoner being a pirate off to face punishment and death in the mines that had apparently spread faster than fire around the city. Good. That would keep them busy. The fact he’d come down at all would have the city, or at least the docks, gossiping for weeks.

The prisoner pirate was less easy to ignore. From what Eric could make out from his peripheral vision—since he of course did not look back—the little man was having a hard time of it. Clío’s pace was too much for his leg irons, and he had to haul himself along using the chain to help pull him forward with every step. The result was an ungainly sort of hop shuffle. And it was clear that his bare feet were not well adapted to the cobblestones and the unmoving ground beneath. But Eric made a point of not appearing to notice.

Ignoring the peasants and the pirate were non-issues compared to ignoring Clío. 

The old mare was not pleased with any of this and had no qualms about letting that fact be known. She tossed her head and huffed and kept her ears back. Not pinned, but her attention was definitely on Eric and the prisoner. She held her head cocked to the side and Eric felt her glaring at him. 

When Clío finally dropped all decorum and took an unconcealed nip at Eric’s thigh right near where the pirate’s chain lay across it, that was enough. Eric jerked the reins to the left, surprising the unicorn and forcing her head back on the straight path. She pinned her ears to her neck and threw her head up high where it stayed. She tucked her hips and pranced her hindlegs under her as though she would rear. Eric just squeezed her forward and held her head straight.

It was a long trek through Havmunn between Clío’s hissy fit and the hobbled pirate’s pace. Clío kept trying to slow down, but Eric pressed her to maintain a brisk, business-like pace that obviously taxed the pirate’s range of motion. When the tiny, colorful man inevitably tripped, fell, and was dragged a few steps, Eric kicked Clío forward to prevent her from slowing. After a few moments of being dragged along the cobblestones, the little man managed to pick himself up and shuffle along as quickly as he could. He was now dirtier and bloodier than he had been and certainly worse for wear. 

Eric didn’t look back at his prisoner, but he could hear the tiny man huffing and sputtering behind him. As they reached the outskirts of town, he could also hear at least a couple disapproving whispering peasants who were apparently unaware of lycans’ abilities of perception. Unlike the jeers of the merchants in town, the peasants’ negativity was mostly directed at him rather than the pirate. Piracy was less objectionable to those not impacted by it, and more likely to be accused of it, than it was to the comparatively wealthy in the city.

Eric ignored them all and pressed his little band forward, past the peasant hovels that decorated Havmunn’s outer edges to the foot of the massive cliff-side road that led up to the plateau.

If the flat cobblestones and hard-packed trails of the city had been a trial for the little pirate, the upward slope and occasionally shifting skree of the cliff-side trail was next to impossible. The tiny man fell repeatedly and was dragged several times before he took hold of more of the chain to bring himself closer to Clío’s shoulder. He clung tightly to the chain and seemed to keep his footing better for it.

The cliff face of the plateau upon which the Reserve sat was a massive arched edifice that jutted out into the seaside plains below. The city of Havmunn had grown up sheltered at its foot nearest the sea, but had not spread around its inland circumference, so there was a point where the cliff-face trail—long since carved by the dwarves in bygone antiquity—was not visible from the town.

At the first of these points where the cliffside sloping road faced outwards into the country, there was a switchback in the trail where a massive old oak grew. How the thing ever rooted there in finely hewn stone and gravel—let alone survived for the ages it had—was beyond Eric’s knowledge. But it was to this tree he directed Clío and pulled her to a stop along the trail. 

“This’ll do,” he said to no one in particular.

He dismounted, untied Rudy’s leadrope from the left side of Clío’s collar, and led the little pony around behind the big unicorn mare and up alongside the pirate, just under the tree, sandwiching the little man in the middle.

When he glanced at the pirate, Eric found the pirate looking upon the single ancient oak with as wide-eyed and pale-faced a look as he had worn when first seeing him. He was breathing heavily and rapidly. Confused, the lycan cast a glance at the tree. When he saw nothing that might earn the old oak such a look of terror, Eric returned his attention to the pirate. The little human was trembling and the sour smells of terror and stress sweat were pouring off of him.

“What’s wro—”

Eric stopped. Looked at the tree. With the pony just under it. Then back at the trembling, sheet-white pirate.

“Oh… No no no!” 

Eric hurriedly pushed Rudy back away from the oak’s lower bows.

“Sorry! I wasn’t thinking,” he said with his paws up—hopefully it meant the same thing in the pirate’s plane as it did here.

“You’re not going to be hung. I’m not going to hurt you.”


	3. Back up the mountain with a pirate in tow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rahkus the pirate didn't hang, but he's still not sure what will become of him. The talking beast who holds him captive claims it has no intention of harming him... though it is certainly talking his ear off. And beasts really shouldn't talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wherein there is exposition and a lot of dialog. Rahkus is supposed to be an Irish pirate circa 1620s, and since I have no time machine, I'm doing my best on writing his accent. Recommendations on sources for better writing dialect welcome. Conversations about the pros and cons of electing to write dialect welcome provided you are willing to offer sources and reasoning to back up your position.
> 
> Estimated reading time: 15 mins

The tiny pirate just stared, white as ever. For a while, neither of them moved or spoke.

“Can… Can you understand me?” Eric asked, careful not to come any closer than he already was. For whatever reason, Aaron spoke the main language of Ownteli, even if in a stilted way. So surely this tiny pirate, who came from the same area as Aaron, could too.

The little man eventually nodded, but his wide-eyed look and the stink of stress sweat continued to pour off him.

“I’m going to get Rudy tacked up for you. To ride. So you don’t have to walk anymore?” the lycan explained. Eric then waited for some acknowledgement from the little man. He didn’t want to spook the pirate any more than he had already inadvertently done.

“A’right?”

The little redhead eventually bobbed, but he neither blinked, spoke, nor moved in any other way. 

After letting his look linger on the manacled man, Eric eventually turned to the little dun pony. He relieved Rudy of his pack, began rummaging around in it, and eventually extracted the tiny set of turquoise tack. The saddle blanket matched the fish-scale leather saddle and bridle, all of which had been made especially for the tiny pony and a similarly tiny rider. The shimmering turquoise tack on the dun pony made a nice contrast. 

Eric collapsed the pack Rudy had been carrying and tied it into a bundle. He left the pony standing where he was—confident he’d stay put—and approached the big black mare to stow the pack in Clío’s saddlebags.

When Eric moved, the pirate backed the few steps away that the chain allowed. The pirate was also wary of being too close to the unicorn and her ominous black horn that could so easily be a lethal weapon. It was clear the little man was keen to stay away from both of them. Clío, meanwhile, slapped Eric unceremoniously with her tail when he was in range. To underscore the fact that yes, she was still very cross with him, she raised her right hind leg—a warning to keep his footpaws a safe distance. Eric took the warning and side-stepped away from the irritated mare.

Finally, the lycan lord turned back to his “prisoner” and withdrew a key tucked into the lacing of one of his gauntlets.

“I’m going to unchain your feet now. So you can ride. A’right?”

Again, the little man said and did nothing, other than staring and breathing heavily. That was probably from the forced march through town, Eric assumed. Also fear.

Since the pirate wasn’t responding, Eric got on with it. He grabbed the pirate’s chain without ceremony and pulled him close. As the man’s eyes went wide, Eric crouched to unlock his leg irons.

“There,” Eric said, removing the restraints and standing up. He stood a good half meter taller than the pirate. Once he let go of the little man’s chain, the pirate hurriedly took a few steps back again. Eric packed the leg irons away in the saddlebags as well. And got another tail slap for his troubles.

“Sorry about… all that before,” he offered sheepishly. “Gotta put on a good show for the cityfolk, you know.”

The pirate stared at him, which was not especially surprising.

“My name’s Eric. You?”

The pirate continued to stare. At one point he blinked.

“You have a name, don’chew?” Eric prompted.

The little man might have scowled, but it seemed like his eyebrows were defaulting to a shocked altitude. He started to nod, then seemed to catch himself. 

“‘M... Rahkus—Sah!”

Whatever the tiny man’s accent was, it was quite heavy and sounded a good deal like the northern dwarf clans. It was obvious from the look of him that he was not a dwarf—well, he might well be a dwarf by condition, but he was not one by race—but the cadence and pitch of his halting speech was familiar.

“No need for ‘Sir,’” Eric said, waving it off. “‘Eric’ll do.”

Eric stepped forwards along Clío’s length up to where the pirate’s chain was attached to her collar. The pirate backed off and away an equal distance. 

Clío waited until the pirate was out of the way to whip her great head—and massive head spike—back around and landed the bite on Eric’s backside she’d been waiting the entire trek through town to deliver. Her aim was excellent. She got a mouthful of the thick, fluffy fur right at the base of his tail. She yanked hard, almost pulling him off his feet and giving some sensitive bits an uncomfortable shock.

“OI!” Eric roared. Once the mare had let go, he hopped out of reach. Still holding the pirate’s chain, he checked his tail. It was missing a respectable chunk of fur. He looked back at the old unicorn just in time to see her huff, blowing away the stolen fur with a wiggle of her top lip.

“What was THAT?!”

Clío’s ears swivelled. What was all this fuss he was making?

“You old cow… I told you the plan!” Eric hissed, rubbing his deplumed backside.

She blew her nostrils, shifted her weight, and rested her back right foot. If he was going make a scene, she could wait.

Lashing his tail and casting cautious glances at his seditious steed, Eric returned to his task of tethering the pirate’s chain back to Clío’s collar. This time, he gave the little man the full length.

“I hope you’ll forgive me for not fully unchaining you,” Eric added apologetically. “I’d rather you not try to run away just yet. While you’re all full of adrenaline and have no idea where you are.”

Eric patted the tiny turquoise saddle seat as the little man made no move towards his mount. “This is Rudy. I think he’ll fit you. But if you eventually decide to take off, you don’t get to take him with you.”

The tiny pirate’s bushy red eyebrows knitted in consternation.

“C’mon,” Eric again indicated the saddled pony. “You do know how to mount, yeah?”

Rahkus nodded slowly. Cautiously, he approached, though it was obvious he wanted to stay as far away as he could. Eric moved away so that the pirate could mount without worrying about him hovering. 

Rahkus kept a close watch on the lycan even at the distance. Eventually he took the risk of looking away long enough to gather up the reins and part of Rudy’s mane, put a bare and bloodied foot into the left stirrup, and easily hoist himself into the saddle. Once seated, he resumed his watch of Eric like he expected a blow to fall on him at any point.

“Aaron told me you’re a good rider,” Eric said conversationally as he circled cautiously around Clío to mount. After he was in his own unnecessarily flamboyant saddle, he turned to the pirate on the pony. “That true?”

There was no answer. The tiny man was again staring at him, still deathly pale. At least now he wasn’t hyperventilating,

“Captain Johns. He said you can ride. S’at so?” Eric asked again, watching the man. Eventually, the pirate nodded.

“Good.”

Eric nodded, pleased, then pressed Clío forward. Rudy, either because of Clío’s motion or the pirate’s command, kept pace alongside. The pirate moved well on the pony, but just watched him.

Eric kept track of Rahkus too, in case the pirate got the mad idea to take off while still tethered. Not that there was anywhere to go. The cliff-side road went up, or down, or out into open air. Up went to their destination. Down went back to town. And open air was a long fall to a sudden death. 

The grade became sharper and Rudy threw his head forward to balance.

“Help ‘im climb,” Eric chided the pirate while indicating the pony. “Lean forward. Makes it easier for them to go uphill.”

Rahkus did as he was told, but still didn’t look away from his staring or say anything. Eric turned to ride face-forward for a while, thinking that perhaps some quiet time might encourage the other’s willingness to speak. 

He was wrong.

They had rounded the great circumference of the plateau’s cliffbase until they could see the city of Havmunn again, turned another switchback, and turned their backs on it again before either one spoke. The zig-zagging across the face of the curving cliff took some time.

“You just gonna stare at me the whole way?” Eric asked, breaking the silence. He looked over just in time to see the pirate drop his eyes. Still, the silence continued.

“You are allowed to talk, ya know,” Eric told him after a few minutes.

Rahkus cast a glance at him but just as quickly looked away.

“Wot…” he started shakily. “Wot ahr ye?”

“Retired Admiral of the Ownteli Navy, at your service,” Eric replied with a grin and a mock bow in his saddle. “Current curmudgeonly Lord Steward of the Battlefield under the Briste Pláta peak.”

Rahkus’ brows knit again. It occurred to Eric that he had perhaps used too many unfamiliar words for the pirate.

“But… Wot AHR ye? M’Lord.”

Eric batted away the title. “Just Eric! I don’t need my staff throwing around ‘M’Lords’ at me.”

The pirate looked confused by this, but didn’t argue.

“Regarding what I am… do you mean my species?”

Rahkus scowled deeper, looking more confused.

“My race?” Eric amended, trying for a potentially more familiar word.

“Aye. Ah’ve no’ seen a speaking beast b’fore.”

“We are commonly called lycans,” Eric explained. “Though don’t believe the silliness with silver and full moons. Some call us totemics, but that’s from old traditions that give us far too much credit for spiritual nonsense. And a few humans call us beastmen, but that’s just rude.”

This explanation did not seem to clear anything up for the tiny pirate. Eric decided to try something else from what he’d heard Captain Johns mention.

“I’m specifically what’s called a leopon lycan. My father was a leopard lycan, and my mother was a lioness lycan. Put a ‘pard and a lioness together and you get a leopon. And a lot of scratches,” Eric added, chuckling, though apparently he was the only one to get the joke.

Whether or not “leopard” or “lioness” meant anything to the pirate from his plane was not something Eric could determine. Rahkus continued to look perplexed.

“Talkin’ beasts,” he eventually said, seemingly to himself. “Ah’ve gone mad.”

The comment didn’t need a response. It was rude, but the pirate’s world had just been rocked, and a few hours ago he’d thought he was going to die, so Eric didn’t begrudge him. They rode in silence for a while more. Then the pirate pulled at his manacles, making the chain jingle differently.

“So… Wot’cher t’do wit’ me ten, aye?”

Eric took some time parsing out what the man had asked, both because of the accent and to try to figure out the best way to explain.

“Aaron—Captain Johns—said you could ride. Apparently your crewmates mentioned your habit of stealing ponies while on shore.”

The little man shifted his gaze down to Rudy’s mane. He played with it like a child caught doing something naughty. 

“I run a ranch. Up there,” Eric said, pointing upwards to the still-distant lip of the plateau above them. Rahkus craned his neck to look up the sheer cliff face.

“S’called the Admiral’s Reserve. I’m the Admiral, of course. I raise draft horses, cattle, grapes, and some of the best hay in the region. Used to train the unicorns for battle,” he said, patting Clío’s neck. “No market for it now though. Not under the current administration, that’s for sure. So, these days I mostly run a crew of drafts. Hauling iron’n steel and goods down from the mountain fer the dwarves. And I run competitions. Races. Jumping. That an’ the like. So… I was thinking of offering you a job.”

“...In t’e mines?”

Eric snorted. 

“The dwarves wouldn’t let you near their mines even if you were a master miner with years of experience. Which I’m guessing yer not?” the lycan asked, casting a skeptical glance at the pirate. Still looking down at Rudy’s neck, Rahkus shook his head.

“That was just a song and dance since the dock’s got ears. A cover. So the local authorities don’t come asking questions. No. I want you to ride.”

This was not what the pirate had expected. He looked up sharply.

“...wot? Why?”

Eric shrugged. 

“Not many adult humans of your size, if you don’t mind me saying. Least of all who can ride. You’re the size of a small child, or a short dwarf, or even a halfling. But children can’t ride in the big kitty comps in Ownteli. And dwarves are surprisingly dense. Not the best for jockeying by any stretch. And hell if I know how to get a halfling on a horse for any reason other than t’go t’is cousin’s afternoon supper.”

After a pause, Eric added, “Plus, such that I know it, your other options are the gallows, either in your world or this one if you don’t learn an honest trade.”

The pirate went back to worrying Rudy’s mane.

“From what I understand of your plane, piracy’s illegal. It’s illegal here too. And it don’t take much to get charged of it. Comes with the same result here as in your plane, as well,” Eric added with a warning tone. 

“But you’ve not pirated here. Aaron caught you lot in your plane. So there’s no charge against you if you stay here. S’not many tiny pirates who can ride, so he figured I might put you to some respectable use. Which I can.”

There was another long pause before Rahkus asked another small question.

“And m’mates?”

Eric let out a long breath. Not quite a sigh, but probably as good as one. There was no good way to tell someone their comrades were all going to die. Or that there was nothing he could—or would—do for them.

“Nothing t’be done for them, m’fraid,” Eric answered quietly. 

The heavy clopping of Clío’s war unicorn hooves on the sloping trail drowned out Rudy’s little hoof-clops and the jingle of Rahkus’ chains. For a long while that was the only sound.

They pressed on through yet another switchback, now headed back towards the city. The sun played brightly on the glittering sea beyond the docks and the bay’s breakwaters. Rahkus wouldn’t know to look, but Eric cast a glance at the westward spar where the forest of gallows trees and pirate cages grew. You couldn’t see anything from this distance or elevation, but the movement of white specks—not the reflections of distant breakers, but slightly closer birds—told the sharp eye what was what.

“Aaron—Captain Johns—had to take your ship and arrest your crew. He’s part of your Britstish Navy—that’s his duty,” Eric said with a sigh after so many silent minutes. 

“If you stay with your crewmates on his ship, you’ll hang with the rest of them. But you lot were close to a thin spot into this plane, and Aaron knew it. He’s been here b’fore. He knew me and figured I could use someone like you. Which I can. If you stay here—and get a proper, LEGAL trade—you’re safe.”

“Why me? Wot’cher care for?” the tiny pirate asked after a while.

Eric shrugged, but this time it was his turn to keep his eyes downcast and play with Clío’s mane.

“Neither Aaron nor I… approve… of what our navies do wit’pirates,” he explained haltingly. “I spent my time at the helm of an Ownteli battle glider supposedly keepin’ the coastlines safe. Safe fer commerce and trade. Safe from pirates. Didn’t think much a what happened to ‘em after I turned them over.”

Eric’s eyes went to where he knew the fat gulls flew so far away, then back to the path.

“Also I didn’t spend enough time inland to know what made folk turn pirate. Or what laws said folk were pirates. Or how easy those laws could change. Or be bent. Then I caught one’a me old navy mates on a reported pirate ship. She were running ponies from one coast town to another. Said she was working for someone and it was legit. And I believed her. Testified to that too. But the warrant said she and ‘er crew were pirates. So she was. An’ that was the last I saw ‘er.”

After a long silence and a heavy sigh, Eric concluded simply enough. “So I retired. Can take my own council now on what’s t’be done wit’pirates. And came here.”

“Where’s here?” Rahkus asked.

Grateful for the distraction, and putting on his best mock tour-guide voice, Eric began rattling off the nomenclature of the area.

“Welcome to the lovely seaside city of Havmunn in the nation of Ownteli,” he said, gesturing broadly to the vistas of land- and seascapes off the side of the trail and back toward the city beneath them.

“Our nation’s primary industries involve horses, blood alchemics, and arrogant authoritarianism disguised behind a smile.”

Rahkus just looked confused.

“And here we are,” Eric continued as Clío crested the final hill onto the plateau. “My ranch. The Admiral’s Reserve!"


	4. Deal with the Devil’s cat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Though it seems the pirate Rahkus has received a reprieve from the noose, he finds himself on a surely bewitched mountain with talking dragons and his host—who is surely a demon. The cat demon not only tempts him with food and drink, but lodging and work besides.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More dialog in my attempts at a 1600s-era low-class Irish brough. Since I have no time machine, I'm doing my best on writing Rahkus' accent. Recommendations on sources for better writing of dialect are welcome. Conversations about the pros and cons of electing to write dialect are welcome provided you are willing to offer sources and reasoning to back up your position.
> 
> Estimated reading time: 15 mins

The so-called ranch laid out before them looked a good deal more like a town than anything else. Eric took it all in with familiar pleasure while Rahkus stared at yet another unfamiliar spectacle.

The main road leading deeper into the plateau divided the “town.” On the left lay a broad boardwalk promenade fronting a “street” of semi-permanent small shop fronts, all currently empty and dark. During the competitions, shows, and fairs the Reserve regularly hosted, these shops would be filled with dwarves from the mountain or townsfolk from the city below hawking their wares to the celebrants. Behind the row of shops were horse stalls with short runs, tack lockers, and rooms each fitting a cot where competitors could bed down near their mounts.

To the right of the main road lay a wide open field interrupted intermittently by a collect of stalls grouped around either trees or wells. During events, this field would sprout a crop of tents, grand to drab, belonging to the competition watchers. These generally came from all over to make merry before and after events. Of great amusement to most attendees to events hosted by the lycan Lord Steward was the fact the campgrounds were egalitarian of the first-come, first-served variety. It was not uncommon for an unknown newcomer to be neighbors with a local lord.

If one took the promenade all the way to the extreme left, past the acres-long row of shopfronts, they would eventually come to the foot of a massive stone stairway leading up to the entrance to the dwarves’ stronghold and the mines farther up the mountain. If one walked the breadth of the camping field to the extreme right, they would eventually come to the lip of the great plateau of the Briste Pláta Battleflats. Below them would stretch a horizon few without access to a strong pegasus would ever see; the northwestern Sea of Imeall an Domhain. Every night, when the sun set, the skies would be painted gold, bronze, and eventually cobalt. The sea reflected these nightly paintings in its own way, lending a patina of blue and green, until consuming the colors in the silver-inlaid black of water at night. 

Eric had heard from some of his fellow plateau dwellers that some of the peasants would come to an event simply to see the sky and the sea from such a vantage point at least once in their lives. Those colors were just starting to show now, given how long the trek up the winding, switchback road up the plateau had taken.

On familiar instinct, Clío and Rudy took the track between the lot of it, pressing on through the abandoned “town” on the one side and campgrounds on the other. As they went deeper into the so-called ranch—beyond the shop fronts, the sleeping stalls, and the camping field—the arenas grew up on either side of the road. The massive, open-topped competition arena stood on the left and the far more modest covered arena stood on the right with the main road running in between them.

The competition arena on the left was a colossal thing, designed and hewn out of white, smooth stone ages ago by the dwarves after the practical need for the Battleflats dissolved but the love of bloodsport had not. It had originally been a sort of colosseum, but now it served as one of the premiere entertainment venues of horsemanship and music in the area. Though it was part of the Reserve, the dwarves maintained control of it and reserved the right to schedule or deny performances.

The covered arena on the right was a wooden and metal structure that was also a testament to the dwarves’ engenuity, though more a modern marvel than the other. Though 300 or so years might not seem “modern” to most, the concept of dwarves working in wood rather than stone still made the long-beards of the mountain cluck about what things were coming to. The structure served as a training arena and refuge from the rain. Or—every few years—a gargantuan drinking hall for the Meeting of Clans.

As Eric and Rahkus approached the arenas, there was an ear-splitting shriek—that godsawful squeal only human infants, adolescent females, piglets, and terrified ponies can produce.

Rudy was up on his hind legs, striking the air with front hooves, and the whites of his eyes bright in the fading evening. Rahkus meanwhile clung to the dancing pony as best he could. The manacles that still bound his wrists kept him from getting a particularly secure hold on Rudy’s neck.

The cause of Rudy’s terror came out of seemingly nowhere. The giant serpentine body that might have been an orange, scaled tree trunk for its size slid noiselessly to block the road. An immense snake-like head rose well above the rooftops of a nearby structure and flicked a black, forked tongue as thick as Raukus’ arm in their direction.

“Good afternoon, Admiral.”

“Hi Varry,” Eric said, trying not to let the annoyance show in his voice as Rudy continued to dance in terror. 

Varetheí Fídi—“Varry” to almost everyone except her uptight relations in the Fídi Flight—flicked her a meters-long tongue in their direction again. It wasn’t helping.

“A guessst?”

“Yes,” Eric answered over Clío’s chiding whinny to Rudy that ostensibly told him to calm down. He did—slightly. The whites of both his eyes and those of his rider were obvious.

“This is Rahkus. He’s visiting possibly. But hopefully staying long term. We may have another visitor later. Ande will guide Furiosa to fetch the other one—Captain Johns—if he can make it.”

“Underssstood, Admiral,” the dragon acknowledged.

“Thank you, Varry. Have a good evening.”

“You asss well.”

With a nod, the serpentine dragon whispered away through and around the buildings with far too little sound for such a massive creature.

Once Varry had disappeared her massive bulk somewhere in the surrounding buildings, Eric let out a massive sigh. He could have slapped himself. Or Varry. Though slapping dragons was ill-advised.

“There’s, uh… dragons here too. And they can talk,” he explained belatedly to the very pale pirate. 

Wide-eyed, Rahkus continued looking the way Varry had gone. Rudy had calmed to just prancing in place with flaring nostrils.

“Ah see t’at.”

“Sorry I didn’t mention that sooner,” Eric added genuinely. “I forget sometimes that what’s normal here isn’t normal other places.”

“T’ere’s not’in’ normal here.”

Eric could only shrug at that.

They passed most of the rest of the trip to the ranch in silence. After passing through the ghost town of the permanent fairgrounds, they crossed the bridge over the river. The far side of the river was lined by grape vines growing bower-like to mark the edges of the private part of the Reserve.

After crossing the river and under an intricately woven arbor draped with and built from grape vines, they took the meandering road that led around the hundreds of acres of farmland and pastures to round the lip of the plateau. The sunset was in full colors for them when they began, ambling slowly around the edge. By the time they had circumnavigated the better part of the plateau to reach the core buildings of the Admiral’s Reserve, the glorious sunset display was in its last glows over the sea-side horizon.

“For now, you’ll be staying in the guest lodge,” Eric said after what seemed ages of silence, gesturing to the smaller of the pair of large, impressive buildings that weren’t arenas or barns as they passed it. “If you wanna stay for good, we’ll figure out more permanent rooms.”

Either through weariness at the trek, awe at the surroundings, or sheer emotional exhaustion, Rahkus did not answer. He alternated between casting long looks at the horizon and examining his more immediate surroundings with a blank dullness about him.

They made it to another covered arena ringed by dozens of box stalls. Eric guided them all inside, dismounted, and began relieving Clio of her tack. The second Rahkus’ chain was detached from her ever-present collar, the ancient mare leapt off like a racer from a starting gate. Eric dodged aside to keep his footpaws intact as she clattered by on the wooden floors of the arena’s pathways. He saved his feet, but managed to land in a heap with the unicorn’s dress tack in his lap.

“Guh… she’s going to be sniping at me for weeks now,” he groaned as he picked himself up.

After putting Clio’s silver-adorned dress tack away in her locker, Eric turned his attention back to the pirate at the end of the chain leash he held.

“Can you dismount?”

The pirate nodded, threw his right leg over Rudy’s back and slid down despite the wrist manacles. Then stood staring, seemingly shocked, when Eric dropped the chain and started tending to the little dun pony. 

Neither one seemed willing to comment on the breach of captor-prisoner etiquette as the lycan detacked, groomed, and cleaned up the tired little pony. It was only with Rudy bedded down in his box that Eric withdrew the manacle key from one of his wrist gauntlets and finally freed the pirate. He coiled then casually tossed the chain and manacles in a heap with little more concern than for dirty laundry.

“So… yer no’ keepin’ me prisoner?” the pirate asked in an incredulous tone. He didn’t move a muscle and just stared at the crumpled chains.

“Nope,” Eric answered the intransigent pirate. “I’d recommend you spend some time here, though. Let things blow over a bit and get your bearings before you take off. If that’s what you really wanna do. But you’re not a prisoner here.”

Rahkus still didn’t move. He stood stock still where he’d landed after dismounting the pony. His grimey, bushy red eyebrows were knitted together and his one good green eye showed his uncertainty. To Eric, he had the look of a feral colt; a strong breeze or a sudden noise would likely be enough to make him bolt.

“You hungry?” Eric finally asked.

That got the pirate to move. Rahkus nodded, rubbing his wrists.

Eric was not surprised the prospect of food could move the tiny pirate. He probably didn’t weigh six stone even when sopping wet, and navy brigs were not known to provide pirates much to eat. Constantly thinking you were going to die was also hungry business.

“C’mon then. I’m sure the dwarves’ve got something good going,” Eric said, gesturing that Rahkus follow.

The pirate gaped in stunned wonder when they entered the guest lodge. It was a hardy wooden building built after the dwarven style, meaning things were big, felt rough-hewn despite being masterfully carved, and harkened back to the artisans’ preferred medium; stone. The seating was low, broad, and ornate without being what most humans would call feminine. Colors were mostly limited to reds, grays, earthtones, and metals. The ceiling was high and vaulted in the way that the dwarves’ stone-cut halls were.

It was a nice building, and Eric reasoned that the little man had likely never been inside such a quality establishment. As the tiny pirate took it all in, the lycan went to the kitchen. As most of the employees who lived and worked on the ranch were dwarves, there was always a pot of beef stew or savory oat porridge going at any given point. Today was beef stew. And oat biscuits. There were always biscuits or bread of some sort when the dwarves were in charge of food. Which was most of the time.

“Hey! C’mere! You gotta wash before you eat,” Eric called to the still-gaping pirate.

The concept of hand washing was alien to Rahkus, a discovery both disgusting and intriguing to Eric. It was easy enough to teach the little man how to do it, though explaining the hot water was not.

“S’witchcraft,” the pirate concluded after hearing Eric’s brief explanation of thermal springs. Eric decided a discussion of internal pipework that carried the hot water into the buildings would likely be beyond the little man.

After repeatedly schooling the pirate on washing his hands and arms, and yes, even under his absolutely disgusting fingernails—with a brush and soap even—Eric finally gathered up the food. He took the two bowls of stew, a small basket of biscuits, and a pair of steins of small beer to one of the dwarven-style long tables.

“‘Ere ya go. Food,” Eric pronounced, passing over the bowl of stew and beer to the pirate and set the biscuits between them.

The man tested his food and drink tentatively, then fell on the meal like a starving man. He might be one, Eric reasoned as he unhurriedly broke biscuit over his stew and dipped it in. Meanwhile, across the table, the pirate’s meal was slurped, scooped, and sopped up in very little time.

“There’s more,” Eric observed, pointing his spoon towards the kitchen. Rahkus nodded, took another biscuit, then used it indelicately like a sponge to get the very last of the stew out of the bowl. 

Then all of a sudden the tiny man stopped. For a moment he sat stock still. He eventually cast a slow look at his biscuit and empty bowl before sending furtive side-eye glances at Eric he likely thought the cat didn’t notice.

“What’s wrong?” Eric asked without looking up from his own food.

The pirate pushed the bowl away an inch or so while eyeing the plate of biscuits as though they were attractive and poisonous at the same time.

“Aye…” he glanced up and then quickly away from his feline benefactor. “Aye r’member a story. Ah t’ink it was a priest wot told et. ‘Bout eatin’ wot demons offer…”

Eric quirked an ear sideways, not really sure what to make of the man’s sudden trepidation. He was now regarding his half-eaten biscuit as though it had personally betrayed him.

“Ye eat t’food a hell, ye stay t’ere.”

Eric quirked his other ear.

“This isn’t hell,” he observed flatly. “And I’m not a demon.”

Rahkus looked from his biscuit to Eric. The pirate looked unconvinced.

“Dunno wot better t’call a talkin’ beast,” he countered. “Ain’t n’er heard ovva lican er any a t’at wot ye sed b’fore.”

Eric thought for a while. The he shrugged.

“Welp… if you’re convinced this is hell and I’m a demon, I probably can’t do much to change your mind. But, if it works like your story, you’ve already eaten food here. So...” He shrugged again and returned to his own dinner.

Rahkus returned his attention to his empty bowl to contemplate his fate. He sat there silently for several moments.

“All I can say,” Eric interjected around a biscuit, “is you won’t get your neck stretched if you stay here. Plus, there’s regular food, soft berth, and plenty of ponies here to ride up on my mountain. Can’t say the same for if you leave.”

The matter seemed to trouble the superstitious pirate for a far shorter time than the topics he raised might have suggested. The smell of the stew was apparently a distracting one. After casting a glance over his shoulder towards the kitchen, and then throwing Eric a narrow-eyed look with his one good eye, Rahkus took another bite of his soggy biscuit. He got to talking business while spraying biscuit crumbs all over.

“D’ye flog yer crew?”

Eric snorted.

“Certainly not! If anyone even uses a whip on one of the horses I’ll keelhaul ‘em. And I think Lady Lei-Lei would skin whatever’s left. Give the hide t’Triss. And she’d make, I dunno, a saddle out of it. Something.”

Rahkus stopped chewing his mouthful of biscuit and his one good eye widened, clearly surprised.

“I’m joking, but only sort of,” Eric said, waving his spoon. “But whip use’d put a crew member out right quick to be sure.”

“Ye pay?”

Eric nodded.

“Ranch hands get a share of total monthly take after maintenance,” he said, laying it out in terms the nautical man would likely understand. 

“Trainers get a share and a half. Comp riders—jockeys, that’d be you—get a share of the monthly take, plus the rider’s share of the kitty. The rider’s share is different depending on the horse.”

Despite Eric’s cultural translation efforts, the pirate did not look particularly illuminated, so Eric tried to summarize the important points.

“You get room’n’board, plus pay once a week, and shore leave regular. Got it?”

Rahkus stuffed what was left of his biscuit into his mouth and chewed over the information. After swallowing, he got up from the table with his bowl—watching Eric as though he expected to be pounced upon—and helped himself to more stew. This took some time given his height and the need to locate a chair to stand on, but he eventually made his way back with his bowl brimming. He set it down, helped himself to two more biscuits, a long swig of his beer, then nodded decisively.

“Ye need me t’make me mark on yer manifest?”

Eric snorted a laugh.

“More or less. But we can get to that tomorrow. Aye?” he asked, leaning over the immense table to offer a hand—or paw, rather—to the pirate. Rahkus eyed it suspiciously, but eventually leaned over to shake it.

“S’a deal wit’ t’devil, t’be shore,” he said, sitting back and tucking into his food. 

The idea didn’t seem to bother him too much anymore.


	5. Night on skald mountain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Though still certain he’s been damned to a mad world for his sins of piracy and… well, other things… Rahkus makes a final break for escape. But perhaps it’s better to be fed and employed in Hell rather than hung in London? Yeah… probably.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rahkus and Captain Aaron Johns are from circa 1620s Earth. I’ve tried to be true to the time from which they are supposed to come and their backgrounds to the extent I know them. For a while I was very interested in the Golden Age of (European) Piracy and related Age of Sail (late 1600s to early 1700s) and I’ve drawn from that period of voracious reading. Similarly, I have had the help of my partner, who has long been particularly enamored of Britain’s Tudor era and times that lead up to and followed it (late 1300s to late 1500s), for cultural, class-based, and language details.
> 
> Specifically for Rahkus, he is Irish, extremely low born, and uneducated. As such, he is culturally, socially, and religiously bigotted by our standards, particularly with regards to Catholic vs. Protestant issues. He has firm opinions on the evilness of the British and about proper religion. His opinions are impassioned, but not well informed. If you have good source material that discusses political, cultural, and other perspectives of the Irish pirate or pauper-classed people of the time in a historically authoritative manner, I would welcome recommendations.
> 
> WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER: hell, damnation, christian mythos, casual suicidal ideation, reference to suicidal ideation, religious bigotry, anti-protestant bigotry, anti-british bigotry, reference to insanity
> 
> Estimated reading time: 13 mins

Rahkus crept to the door of his room. He had waited until all he could see out his window was night-dark sky before he’d moved.

Watching the sunset from a hammock indoors was unnatural. For that matter, a hammock that didn’t move was unnatural. It was better than the bed to be sure. Rahkus had little experience with them. He’d been grateful to the cat-demon for finding him a proper hammock, but sleeping in one on land was still unnatural.

The “bathing” had been unnatural too. Who with any sense went willful into water like that? But the cat-demon, and later his misshapen short men, wouldn’t have it. They said he stank. 

Rahkus had thought they were drowning him at first, but then warmed to it after a while. It felt good to have servants rubbing nice-smelling things on him and giving him things to chew what stopped his teeth from hurting, even if they were ugly demon servants or some such. 

Still… it was all unnatural.

Rahkus chided himself at this. Why expect anything natural here? Where beasts spoke and unicorns were ridden and wyrms were as dogs? Expecting naturalness in Hell was likely a madness of its own.

It was dark, save for the starlight coming in from the window at the end of the hall, and no one was up at this hour so far as Rahkus could tell. All the better, since navigating the shadows in the hall was difficult and he kept making noise walking across the floor. The little pirate knew how to read starlight on wet decks, or candle light in deep holds, to see where boards might creak to give him away. But trying to read light on smooth wood and whatever painted fur rugs that ran down the floor… that was a mystery.

As was this place. It was surely a manor in Hell, but it looked like a massive tavern inn. A clean one. And quiet, save for the noise he was making. As Rahkus made his way down the hall to the window, he passed doors that likely led off to other rooms. They were probably just as his was and held more of those misshapen demon men. Or the demon women who had both bosoms and beards. But there were no screams of either torment nor debauchery and Rahkus would have expected one or both from an inn in Hell.

He supposed an inn made sense. The priests said the Devil prepared rooms for everyone in Hell. But all the priests Rahkus had ever heard always made it sound like they weren’t real rooms. With beds. And dressers. And wash basins with sweet water. And privies in the rooms that didn’t smell.

That was the oddest thing about this hell. No stench of death or burning. Or of anything really. Rahkus always heard there was fire and brimstone in Hell. Whatever brimstone was. One of the men of the cloth his crew caught said it smelled like canon smoke and accompanied the wails of the damned. But everything in the cat-demon’s inn was sweet and silent and still.

Once he made it to the window—a right proper one, with fine glass panes—Rahkus looked out and saw unfamiliar dark fields and what might have been a building. He was also hit with a wave of nausea. It wasn’t natural being up so high yet seeing nothing move. He held onto the windowsill and let it pass. Before it struck again, he had the window open and made his way swiftly down, using bricks and the vines that grew thick on the walls as rigging.

Once again on the ground, Rakhus tried to get his bearings but he found the alien stars were no help. They didn’t show him north. But he could recognize the lip of the cliff this place was on right enough, and he knew that the sea lay beyond and below that cliff.

He sprinted across the land. 

He wasn’t running away. Not that you could. Not from Hell or a devil you’d made a pact with. But he had to be out. On his own terms. Not shut up in a dark brig or a devil’s soft berth. Out. 

If he was going to stay here, Rahkus wanted to see the sea one last time. See his crew one last time. Such that he could. Not that he’d ever see them again. At least not until they’d hung and mayhaps come back to this or some other hell.

Rahkus slowed once he saw the bright line where the sea met the sky. He trotted the rest of the way and stopped short of the sheer dropoff. The line between the safety of flat land and the death of a long fall was marked only with a line of bright white stones the size of a man’s fist. 

Rahkus dared—carefully—to peer over and down. 

Were it not for all his time in the crow’s nest, the pirate might have swooned to his death at the height. The town below was spread out like so many pinpricks of light. Hairline wisps of chimney smoke were the only ways to tell the buildings apart. If any man—or beast—was out at this time of night, Rahkus could not see them at this distance. He could only vaguely make out the white, grays, and blues of a few of the largest sails of the ships lying at anchor in the harbor. Even they were hard to make out and visible only by their slight movement.

The pirate tried to pick out the square sails of the damned British galleon that sunk his captain’s ship and held his mates in its belly. He couldn’t, but he strained his one good eye still, willing himself to find them anyway.

Not that him finding them would do them any good. Once in a navy brig, the likes of them were doomed to the noose in London.

The farce of a rescue attempt briefly crossed his mind, but Rahkus dismissed it as soon as he recognized it. He couldn’t do anything for them. And there was no good getting himself captured and killed on a fool’s errand.

The pirate shifted his attention from the fate of his compatriots to the sea. Unlike the tiny lights of the town below, or the almost unseeable sails of the ships in the harbor, the sea was enormous. It encompassed the whole horizon. And it looked deceptively close. If he could fly, he could be there in no time. He could almost touch it from here.

As it always was at night, the sea was bright and dark all at once. Instead of greens and blues and blinding whites of the day, the night’s lights of a strong moon and clear sky made it black and white.

Rahkus glanced up at the unfamiliar stars again. Then to the moon. That at least looked as it should. If the moon worked in Hell as it did in the land of the living, it was perhaps three hours until dawn and this mountain shelf was pointed mostly north-northwest. But who knew how the sea and stars and moon worked in Hell.

After pushing a few of the guard stones aside, Rahkus sat with his legs dangling over the edge of the cliff. The impulse to just push himself the extra distance and out into empty space hit him. It often did when he was up high and Navy sails were on the horizon. Or a churning sea with dark looming clouds was all that he could see. He curled his fingers into the grass beside him and let it pass. As it always did.

Looking out at the sea, the pirate wondered at the drive to stay alive. Was he even alive? If this was Hell and he’d made a deal with a devil, surely he must be dead? Could you go to Hell if you were still alive? He had never heard tell of any of this, and it was nothing of what the priests said of Hell or demons.

The tiny pirate plucked up a tiny pebble and tossed it over into empty air. He watched it fall as long as he could and distractedly considered what sins likely landed him here.

Piracy certainly. Cursing. Not being church-going most likely. Buggery. Maybe being a bastard son of a dock whore, though he thought it unfair a sin to be damned for since he had no hand in it. And probably not praying. Well, he prayed, but not the right way most likes. And killing folks what needed killing. ‘Specially British. But the Lord shouldn’t look askance at killing those what followed the bastard James who thought he could rewrite the word of God. Probably would even think it a service.

Killing British aside, Rahkus was under no delusions about his soul. Here he was in Hell after all. He’d eaten the tuck. He might also be mad, Rahkus reasoned. But he’d always figured madmen didn’t know themselves to be mad.

With a sigh, Rahkus leaned back on his hands and looked out at the night-dark sea. Whether mad or damned, at least he was fed and mostly free. That was something, wasn’t it?


	6. A difference of perspective

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While the pirate “escapes,” Eric and his other otherworldly visitor, Captain Aaron Johns, discuss gods, magic, technology, politics, and exchange fine gifts from their world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Captain Aaron Johns and Rahkus are from circa 1620s Earth. I’ve tried to be true to the time from which they are supposed to come and their backgrounds to the extent I know them. For a while I was very interested in the Golden Age of (European) Piracy and related Age of Sail (late 1600s to early 1700s) and I’ve drawn from that period of voracious reading. Similarly, I have had the help of my partner, who has long been particularly enamored of Britain’s Tudor era and times that lead up to and followed it (late 1300s to late 1500s), for cultural, class-based, and language details. 
> 
> Specifically for Captain Johns, he is a Protestant British Navy captain, i.e. a relatively low-ranking noble from a time and place where Catholic and Protestant were immense political lines. He is culturally and religiously bigotted by our standards, as well as bearing the marks of his time, class, and religion’s opinions regarding, among other things, other cultures, their technology, homosexuality, and the concept of sex change. If you have good source material that discusses political, cultural, and other perspectives of the British navyman or low noble-classed people of the time in a historically authoritative manner, I would welcome recommendations.
> 
> WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER: religious bigotry, anti-catholic bigotry, anti-Irish bigotry, 1600s English, early-modern English, imperialism, classism, internalized homophobia, self-loathing, sex change, religious furvor, christianity, proselytizing, bible verses
> 
> Estimated reading time: 17 mins

“What?” Aaron asked as Eric stood up suddenly from where they shared a spot in the guest lodge’s Great Hall. 

The lycan held up a paw for silence. His ears twitched and swiveled in tiny motions most beings couldn’t see as he listened for that tell-tale creak and scrape of someone moving around upstairs. Possibly opening a window. On the fourth floor.

“I think m’new house guest is taking ‘is leave,” Eric eventually answered.

Aaron scowled.

“The pirate?”

Eric nodded before he slowly sat down again to his late-night plate of oat scones and stew gravy. He’d eaten dinner with the pirate, but courtesy demanded he eat with the navy captain as well. He returned his attention to his supper guest, but left one ear tracking the noises upstairs. 

“Shall you not offer pursuit?” Aaron pressed.

“Nah,” Eric shook his head dismissively. “Varry will keep track of him. Make sure he doesn’t get too far.” 

The human made a face somewhere between disgust and trepidation.

“Yes. Your… serpent.”

Eric’s distracted ear swiveled to attention as he grinned at the captain’s tone. “I think Varry’d have something to say about being called mine. Dragons have a long proud history of eating anyone who tries to subdue them. They much prefer being paid, anyway.”

The idea of employing a dragon seemed as objectionable to Aaron as the mere fact of them if his face was any indication. So Eric tried to change the subject back to its earlier topic. 

“You were saying about your... king problems?”

It took nothing to get Aaron to continue on about the politics of his world. Eric followed little of it, other than to understand that he mourned his past Queen Bess, had mixed feelings regarding his current King James’ alliances, and it seemed his nation was at war with a nation called Spain. But — most importantly — Eric understood that his friend enjoyed having an audience for his grousing. 

Aaron’s enemy nation of Spain  — such that Eric understood it — was apparently allied with something called Papistry. Eric wasn’t sure if it was a tribe or another nation, but Aaron’s description led him to think it was some sort of confederacy of masculine wraiths or something similar and it was clear that the human thought it worse than almost anything else. Though Aaron’s archaic grasp on Common made his story that much more difficult to understand, so it was quite possible Eric was mistaken in his understanding.

“This crypto-Papist James doth issue letters of marque but respects not the letters issued by foreign princes!” Aaron railed. “And yet doth call Parliament but to harangue them. It is much fault in him thus to do, to advance the old Howards, to seek out Papacy, and to call himself King of a nation that existeth not!”

Eric chewed on an oat scone as Aaron’s excitement crescendoed. It sounded like his far-distant friend was facing similar political trials in his world as was the case in Ownteli.

“Sounds familiar,” Eric eventually put in when Aaron paused to take a breath and drink from his stein. 

“Our 'Overseeing Watcher' recently ordered up a set of ambassadors, supposedly to represent the wills and interests of the people, but it's a farce. She rules by fiat, and her enforcers live by one rule and wield another against us as it suits them.”

“Is your ‘Overseeing Watcher’ the queen of these realms?” Aaron asked with the same look of half comprehension Eric felt. The lycan nodded.

“I suppose ‘queen’ is as good a description for her as any. She claims to commune with the makers of this world, though we have no evidence of her supposed world shapers.”

“Your queen soundeth more like to the Pope, who doth claim to speak for God!” the other-worldly human interjected angrily.  “It is as our James, who, despite his piety in England, doth play the absolute monarch. Would that Parliament did rule, and James but reign! Certes, we would see no more of this Papist bride talk!”

The human slammed the flat of his hand noisily on the sturdy tabletop, then seemed to regret his outburst. The cat did not miss the furtive glances his guest shot around at the mostly empty hall.

“But I cannot say such save here,” Aaron eventually admitted in a lowered tone. “I would be attained for low treason or sedition, and set in the stocks. Or even hanged.”

That, at least, was something Eric could understand and get behind. He raised his drink.

“To low treason and sedition!” he said before drinking. “May I and the Overseeing Watcher’s enforcers continue to forget how much of it I’ve committed over my long years!”

Aaron also took up the toast, though he looked at once ashamed and pleased. They drained their steins together.

“You should find your own mountain to retire on,” Eric advised. “It's a lot easier to live as you please and keep out of trouble in the doing. I miss the sea, to be sure, but I prefer it here where I am not at the beck and call of a tyrant. Power, wealth, and privilege has its… well, privileges.”

The captain demurred, claiming to be too poor for such a strategy. Still, he painted a little fantasy picture of a small island in warm waters somewhere in his world.

“Build me a house, and live among the locals there, and take a wife from amongst them,” he said with that sort of wistful tone common to dreamers too practical to believe their own hopes. Eric pointedly did not draw attention to that. It was only polite. So he focused on a different topic instead with a quirked eyebrow.

“A 'wife,' aye? Did'ja lose taste for your engineer then? Wotsis name? Michael?”

Pale-skinned humans had this amusing ability to turn colors when shocked or afraid. It was like a furred lycan’s bristling display. Aaron, while otherwise unmoved, was showing the death-white color display.

“Sure, I do repent me of that sin and I do trust that God may, in time, grant me cleansing of it. But if that I do not come free of the sin, still a man needs an heir. And if thou dost know a means by which a man may get an heir upon a fair engineer, would that thou woulds tell me of it!”

Eric had been mostly teasing the man to get his mind off of the pain that is unreachable dreams, but at Aaron’s similar jesting question he had to think. He scratched his chin tuft.

“Well... if your engineer would consent to it, we could make him a maid for the necessary activities,” he said after a long thoughtful pause.

Aaron’s eyebrow fur went so high on his face and bunched so close together he looked like he was constipated.

“It’d be time consuming,” Eric continued, thinking through the logistics of the potential project. “Human cubs need their dams for some years, but it’s doable. Then we change him back afterwards. Unless he was content with the change. Many wot make the change here are.”

It was some time before any color returned to the human captain’s pallid complexion. When it did, it was red and started at his neck and ears then spread in blotches to his face.

“Good Master Eric! I have, since that I have known you, seen horses fly, dwarves and elves walk among us, and that most strange black-and-white bear-whore. I have seen this place, and men like to you, and horses that seem not to age, and much else beside. And truly, I tell you, I have said to all ‘God is great, and vast, and hath made these wonders.’ And now tellest thou me that man — made by God — may make such wonders as rend a man from his body, not by death, but to give him that of a woman?”

Eric simply nodded while chewing another gravy-dipped oat scone.

“This is witchcraft, surely,” Aaron said after some considerable time gaping. Eric shrugged. 

“That's what that pirate you brought me said. He seems convinced this is hell and everything about this place is witchcraft.”

Aaron waved this off. “He is Irish. They are a superstitious, priest-ridden folk, and do show all the ill effects of Papacy. I do know the marvels of mechanism and body that are here, but to change that sex which God decreed surely leaves the realm of human endeavor, and draws upon the strength of Lucifer.”

Contextually, Eric assumed Lucifer must be another of the gods or spirits of Aaron’s world. He had heard of some, but not all, and this one, plus Papastry — or Papacy? Popery? — was new.

“We're not all human here,” Eric reminded the captain. Perhaps that was the thing of it. Aaron’s world had only humans.

“From all you've told me in the past, much of this world is considered magic in yours. But the body is very malleable. It doesn’t take much to change it or how it functions. For us, it is but small leaves of the proper blood alchemics applied to the sexual organs of mature creatures. Then the body reforms itself. That your world has not learned this does not make it the work of a god or magic. The sciences of your world are akin to magic here. You can steer your ships with wood and wind and cloth and rope—”

“That is no science or witchcraft, but simple art!” Aaron interrupted.

Eric shrugged again. 

“Your ‘arts’ of explosives and fine sails and the mysteries of map making and literacy might as well be the stuff of dwarven legends and elvish magic here, where we harness flying horses to help haul what — to you — are simple ships and capturing wind in waxed cloth is still a new technology. That is all our blood alchemics are — technology. Call it what you will.”

“It cannot be of God to change one's sex,” Aaron said, though it seemed he was speaking more to himself than to Eric. “For, if such is done, could not you also make me to desire women?”

“Sure,” Eric retorted, accidentally spitting crumbs. 

“If you brought your engineer here and he consented to it, I could possibly make you desire a woman. Since you desire him and he would then be at least in the body of a woman. Or, if you'd like to go on with loving men, but would rather not the hassle of your world's laws, you could be at least in the body of a woman.”

Aaron gawked at Eric as though he had blasphemed anew. He probably had, to be fair — Eric couldn’t keep Aaron’s gods and sin rules straight. There were so many of them. Plus he wasn't sure if those who loved members of their own sex were quite so rigid as some who loved members of another sex here. Eric, for his part, enjoyed them all so cared little for the details of anatomy, except as that informed how best to give and receive pleasure. Others were perhaps less flexible.  


Silence pressed on and the human was still red and looked constipated. 

“I take that as a 'no' on you bringing your engineer or wanting to be a woman yourself?” Eric eventually prompted.

Aaron seemed to take care to be polite when he eventually spoke.

“I think my Michael would not choose to be a woman at the cost of his soul, nor would I. I will keep my soul, and cast aside the sin of lying with men. With God's aid, I shall succeed, and lie with women alone — aye, and one woman, so that I may not be committing fornication.”

Eric was about to ask where the fun was in that, when the human interjected again.

“Canst thou read, friend? If thou canst, I can gift thee a bible, for I would see no man damned by ignorance.”

Without waiting for an answer, the human fished about in his satchel. He withdrew a finely made and clearly well-used tome that he then placed ceremonially into the lycan’s appreciative paws. 

“I do give this thee, that thou mayst learn of our Lord and Saviour, who died upon the cross that we may be spared Hell, and know hope of Heaven when we die,” pronounced the captain officiously. He continued to prattle on about his seemingly multi-named god and something about a primer for reading, but Eric was not listening. He simply marveled over the craftsmanship of the tome Aaron had just gifted him.

The tome was a thing to behold. Eric just looked at it wonderingly for some time as Aaron preached. He took in the smell of it, which was potent from both being carried to sea in a leather satchel, but also because of its weathered leather binding and whatever parchment it was made of. There was a satisfying musk to all of it. When he opened it, he found that the pages were even thinner than the stuff of the blood alchemic “leaves,” which were so thin you could see through them. Whatever this was, it was not parchment, and, despite its thinness, it was not transparent. The script on these pages was no script at all, but regular, angular black letters. Tiny, and precisely spaced, yet without any indication of the copier’s guiding marks. 

There were no such tomes in Ownteli as far as Eric knew. By its very nature, it boasted of literate technologies that even the dwarven masters likely couldn’t reproduce. He made a mental note to show them the next time he had an audience with the Atoani Clan elders.

Still wondering at the magnificent thing, Eric eventually interrupted Aaron’s religious diatribe to answer that, yes, he could read in some hands, but none well in any, though better than most in this world. The written word was not valued or supported here in Ownteli, with only some minor record keeping being tolerated. Extensive record keeping of a ranch’s financial and reproductive histories was viewed with extreme suspicion by the enforcers of the Overseeing Watcher. Too much record keeping, particularly of statements made by the nation’s powers that be, was seen as downright seditious. Information was passed mostly by spoken decrees that were retold through the masses. If one made records of spoken words on parchment, it might as well be treason since it made the speakers unable to claim later that they had said no such thing uncontested. It served the Ownteli powers well to rule over a mostly illiterate citizenry.

Eric eventually turned his attention fully to Aaron.

“This is among the finest gifts I have ever received, my friend! I shall treasure it. I will even try to read it if you think it of importance.”

The captain apparently did, so Eric made an attempt to not seem inhospitable.

Though the tome’s non-script was hard to read because it was novel, Eric tried to make out the story on the page he opened to. It was apparently a prayer of one of the devotees of Aaron’s god. It described the “Lord” as [consuming its servants in its anger](https://biblehub.com/kjv/psalms/90.htm). Eric flipped through looking for that word “Lord” and settled on another page. This time Lord was described as being [“as an enemy” who swallowed up people](https://biblehub.com/kjv/lamentations/2.htm) — or places? — and apparently made the daughter of Judah sad. Or possibly bred with her. Maybe both. Eric wasn’t sure.

“I don't recognize all of these words, but from those I do and from what you've said…” Eric peered at the text. “Yours is an all-consuming god of rage and destruction?”

“Aye, and of peace and life, water and fire, air and earth. For there is no God but God, and Jesus is his true-begotten Son,” clarified Aaron. 

This cleared up little for Eric. It seemed like Aaron worshipped numerous gods based on how many names he was using to refer to them. Or it. Still, he knew better than to engage a self-proclaimed monolatrist on their reasoning. Least of all a friend who had just gifted him something that was such an engineering marvel as was this tome.

“I will try to learn from this gift to better understand your world,” Eric said, carefully setting it aside. “As it always is, this has been yet another enjoyable, if confusing, evening. But I can't let you go without a gift from my world as well. I have no tomes for you, and you have deemed our alchemics unacceptable, but at least I can send you off with some fattened cattle? Or a charger foal to raise as your warmount? I have a recent crop of foals newly weaned from their dams.”

“A foal of the kind you breed here would be a princely gift, but how would I keep it aboard ship?” Aaron laughed, then declined.  “If that thou wouldst gift me ought, let it be small and light, for a sailor must keep nothing but such about him.”

Eric thought a moment before fetching one of the items from his belt. The tiny sand timer boasted jewelry-levels of fine craftsmanship the dwarven artisans were so widely known for. He set it on the table across from Aaron. 

“If you do not think it unacceptable witchcraft, if you have this on your person when learning a new skill, you will learn it twice as quickly. Perhaps it will be of use to you.”

The human reacted to the item with the same level of fascination Eric had had over the tome. After several silent moments of examining the item, the human wrapped it carefully in a cloth and placed it into his satchel.

“This is fine craftsmanship indeed! A work of art! Friend, you do me much honor!”

They each fell to examining the otherworldly gifts the other had given them and their talk fell to the distracted mundane. Eventually Eric stood and extended his paw across the table to shake, since the pattern of conversation indicated the evening was coming to an end. Aaron took his paw and they again performed the forearm to forearm shake for the second time that day. 

“Goodnight, my friend,” Aaron said after Eric had escorted him to the door. The ranch master gathered up the reins of Furiosa, the winged red mare that had brought Aaron to the plateau earlier that evening. She had been tied out in front of the guest lodge and would take him back to his ship. Eric held her for the navyman to mount.

“And to you, Aaron,” he answered. “Fair winds and smooth sailing. Hopefully your travels see you back here soon after you reach your London.”

As the man settled on the pegasus’ back — the positioning was odd for those where were unused to it — he gave a roguish smile that fell into mock disappointment.

“I fear me I shall not return apace. We must put ashore in several ports betwixt here and London for supplies. I fear I may misplace some of my prisoners in the process, much as the tiny blaggard has gone missing.”

Eric barked a laugh. “I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for him.”

“Good man,” Aaron said, nodding, as he turned his winged mount away.

“You too,” Eric answered to the figure the red pegasus was already bearing away into the night’s sky.


	7. Farewell to the sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rahkus and Eric reflect on their past lives at sea with some cautious reminiscing. The retired admiral asks the pirate how he went rogue and the pirate asks the past navyman why he gave it up. They come from different worlds in more ways than one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER: dialect, implied bad childhood, implied past abuse, reference to impressment, reference to press ganging, reference to kidnapping, class privilege, class privilege disparity, discussion of government, discussion of tyranny
> 
> Estimated reading time: 14 mins

Eric hadn’t been surprised at Varry’s early-morning report that Rahkus had “escaped” during the night. That the little man had run only so far as the cliff edge to sit and look out at the sea for the better part of the pre-dawn hours was not what he had expected, however. 

Luckily, the giant serpentine dragon had had the good sense not to approach the superstitious, flighty pirate. Instead, she had just observed from a considerable distance after she’d noticed him. Otherwise, the man might well have gone over the cliff at the shock of it.

When Eric set himself to approaching Rahkus, he took his own precautions in keeping the little human grounded. He had taken his time in getting Clío and Rudy prepped and ready to ride for the day. The big black mare had “helped” in making it time consuming. She was still angry with him, so she gave him a good chase in the early dawn. He was about ready to go find one of his other, less petulant mounts when Clío finally held still long enough for him to put a bridle on her. He attached small bells to her chest collar so that they could not sneak up on the man. Rudy also got his own collection of noisy tack.

Eric took his equine troupe in a circuitous route instead of walking straight from the arena to where Rahkus was precariously perched, which would have them approach the man’s back. He guided Clío to a distant point on the cliff where the plateau jutted out, far to the pirate’s right where his good eye was, then walked slowly and noisily along the edge so the other could see and hear them approach.

Rahkus did not move nor acknowledge the trio until they stopped and stood just a few feet away. Even then, the pirate did not turn or move. He just kept looking out towards the sea.

“Ah ‘spect it’s better t’be in debt t’a devil on Hell’s shores t’an at sea sailin’ to m’own hangin’.”

“Reasonable,” Eric nodded, deciding not to press the “I’m not a demon/this isn’t hell” argument right now. It wasn’t the time. He was sitting on a massive black war-unicorn after all.

Rahkus opened his mouth, as though to keep speaking, then closed it, still not looking away from the horizon. Eric looked off too. It was almost too bright to look at directly at the moment. The sun — finally up over the ridge of the Briste Plátas to their backs — reflected off the endless expanse of the northern sea. The blinding light was only broken up by rare spots of dark. Either the sails of ships coming and going if vertical, or — if horizontal — the waves that broke the glass-like finish of the sea when seen at this distance.

“Gonna miss it?”

It was a stupid question. There were plenty of reasons people went to sea in this world, and likely many more in the other worlds, and not all of them had to do with the love of the water. But no one who took to the unforgiving life onboard a bucking piece of wood, at the mercy of the elements and under constant threat of starvation or death, for only fiscal or practical reasons looked out at the sea the way the colorful little man was right now.

Rahkus sighed and nodded. “Aye.”

They were both silent as they stared out at the bright horizon for a while

“An’ ye?” the pirate asked without turning to look at him. 

Eric flicked an ear in the little man’s direction but otherwise didn’t move. There were so many answers. So much he could say. The freedom of being out on the sea. That feeling when you were standing at the prow of a speeding glider that seemed even more like flying than riding a pegasus. The sheer mechanical joy at making the ship — a senseless piece of wood shaped by intelligent hands and paws — perform precisely how you needed it to. The comradery of being with the crew and the sense of unambiguous, uncomplicated purpose and fulfillment at doing the right thing and doing it well. He missed all of that, and so much more.

But Eric figured there was some wisdom of in the pirate’s monosyllabic answer. He dismounted, let the unicorn and the pony go to graze, and set himself down on the ground with his legs stretched out in front of him beside the pirate before eventually answering.

“Yep.”

They sat together looking out at the ocean for some time in silence. After a while, Rahkus broke the stillness by scratching his tuft of red chinfur.

“Ah cannea remember not goin’ t’sea much t’tell t’truth,” he volunteered in a wistful tone. “Ah remember bein’ afeared when m’ma gave me t’Murchú fer a fisherman’s lad. An’t’first time ‘e took me oot inna boat. An’ t’en again when we went oot t’sea. But Ah dinnea remember b’fore all t’at when Ah weren’t at sea’r on t’water.”

Eric was not wholly surprised to hear the pirate had gotten his seafaring start through fishing. It was a fairly common route. Though the detail that the little man’s mother and apparently given him to a fisherman — hopefully as an apprentice of sorts, but possibly not — was interesting.

“How’d you go pirate?” Eric asked, seeing if the little man would continue volunteering information about himself.

“Ah were ‘mpressed by t’damned British t’be a ship’s boy,” the man responded flatly and without additional detail. After sorting through the man’s accent — as he always had to — Eric realized he was referring to impressment, or press ganging; the habit of maritime kidnapping peculiar to navies and merchant fleets in time of labor needs.The lycan was not overly surprised the man did not elaborate further. Given that Rahkus was roughly the size of a young and underfed prepubescent human cub now, as an adult, Eric could easily imagine that his experience of being a ship’s boy was likely less pleasant than even the usual version.

“After six mont’s’a t’at hell, we were taken by a pirate an’ Ah joined up’s fast as Ah could make m’mark,” Rahkus continued. “S’t’best time a m’life after learnin’ fishin’ from Murchú. Ah coould do as Ah liked, most times. Good crews’n mates. More’n any time else, t’be shore.”

“Well, I hope here will be as good,” Eric offered. “I try to make sure my crew’s fat’n happy.”

The pirate cast a cautious glance at the cat, before returning to staring out at the bright reflection of the sea.

“Ye be an adm’ral?” the pirate asked after a while of silence.

Eric nodded. “I was. Had eight gliders and full navy crews under me at the height of my career. Retired now.”

“When wuz’at?” the pirate asked.

Eric had to think. He had gotten Toby on a whim as a gangly day-old foal on the walking trip back from resigning his post. But how old was Toby? Or Clío? He got her shortly after he had talked the dwarven elders to allow him to take up the steward’s position here on the Battleflats. But there was no telling how old she was either, and he had lost count of the number of foals she had had, a common way of estimating age.

Eric eventually cocked his ear in thought for a moment then shrugged. “I can’t rightly remember. You lose track after the first couple hundred years or so.”

“Ye dinnea look old,” Rahkus observed, though his tone and single upraised eyebrow suggested he was responding to what he thought was a joke.

“’Course not. I’ve got a dragon’s stone,” the lycan retorted without thinking. Before he even realized his mistake, Rahkus asked the obvious otherworlder’s question.

“Wot’s a dragon’s stone?”

“It’s a…” Eric paused. 

How to describe such a thing? Specifically, how to describe it as something _other_ than magic or ‘witchcraft’? And in such a way that the pirate would understand? Eventually, he shrugged, concluding he couldn’t.

“It’s a stone wot slows down aging when you wear it close. Almost to a stop, so you don’t age. The dragons are the only ones who can get them out of the earth, so they’re called dragon stones.”

Rahkus regarded him now with two raised bushy red eyebrows. “Ye’ ‘ave a stone. Wot kin stop ye from aging?” 

“Yep,” Eric answered simply, indicating an orange crystal embedded into his belt. The belt had several other things on it besides the orange stone — gems and tiny tools and other odds and ends. All were either worked into the leather and sewn in, or attached to the belt in some way.

“‘Ow old are ye?”

Eric shrugged again. “Dunno. I know I’ve got records somewhere of how long I’ve been in this world, but I’ve been to others and I’m not even sure I’m from this one originally. So I’ve lost track of my age.”

The lycan let his head loll to the side to regard the pirate while flicking his tail lazily. “You?”

The pirate shook his head like he was shaking water out of his ears. New, previously impossible ideas could have that effect on a being. When he eventually spoke, it was a slow, thoughtful drawl.

“Ah… dinnea know, m’self,” he eventually answered. “Dinnea know when Ah were born. ‘Spect Ah’m near a score’re so?”

Eric just nodded. Most of the gamins of Ownteli’s cities and towns similarly didn’t know their exact ages and he was pretty sure Rahkus had been an equivalent in his world before going to sea. Allowing for the man’s unusually small stature, the lycan estimated the human was in his early to mid 20s.

Rahkus gave that sort of shift in body language that often precedes a topic shift in someone who was uncomfortable with the current topic. “Ye were an adm’ral. Wit’ eight shifts at yer command, ye sed. An’ ye retired cos’ a wot yer navy did wit’pirates. And yer old navy mate.” 

They weren’t actually questions, but the retired admiral decided to treat them as such. He nodded again.

“That. And other things.”

When Eric didn’t elaborate, Rahkus eventually turned to regard him with his good green eye. The lycan watched the human look him over. It was a curious, but calculating examination. Rahkus did not seem to be afraid at this point. He had an air of resignation, or possibly exhaustion, but both could lead a person to be less fearful and willing to venture into places they might not have before.

“Like wot?”

Eric sighed. Eventually, he drew up his knees closer to his chest and — after adjusting his kilt to keep himself properly covered for polite society — wrapped his arms around them loosely. When he spoke, he did so while looking out at the horizon.

“S’not a good government here. S’corrupt. Unequal. The laws don’t apply the same to all folks, even though they’re supposed to. The leaders lie, cheat, and mistreat the citizenry as it suits them. Our leader — the Overseeing Watcher — will change the law by fiat without telling us, though we will be judged by them and expected to know them,” Eric explained with a growl.

“S’a tyranny and we all — but most especially the lowly, the poor, the powerless, and those what don’t fit the mold of what the leadership here expects — continue drawing breath only at the whim of the Overseeing Watcher and her enforcers. There’s no justice here.”

Beside him, Rahkus offered only a humorless chuckle.

“T’at’s jist governments. T’ey all do sich t’ings if t’ey can.”

“Maybe in your world, but…” Eric started, trying to figure out how to explain. “I’ve been in other worlds. And not all governments out there are like that. Some serve their people’s needs and citizens are treated equally before the law. And there’s not one law for the rulers and one for the ruled. The people — everyone — can expect justice.”

Rahkus snorted skeptically.

“Ye retired as’a navy adm’ral. Wit’ yer own ships’n crews. Coz a all t’at?” the pirate asked with a clear tone of derision. Eric realized it all probably sounded nonsensical, especially to someone who had apparently never had any relevant power over his own life.

“Yeah. Well… I was part of that government for so long. And… I didn’t know all that about it before,” Eric went on in an almost apologetic tone. 

“I thought it was what they said it was; lawful, just, and equal. And I was part of it. Helping protect the nation from those who cheat the systems to harm the nation and the people. I didn’t realize that most of those people who supposedly cheat the system and break the laws do so without knowing it because the system cheated them first and the laws were changed without their control or consent and with no recourse to defend themselves.”

Eric’s ears flattened and he had a bit more growl in his voice as he continued. 

“I also didn’t know that most of those who knowingly broke the laws and gamed the system to their own benefit and to the detriment of the people — real criminals — already had power and wealth. Those kinds knew they could cheat out in the open without the government doing anything against them. Most times because they were part of the government to begin with. 

“And our Overseeing Watcher claims that there are criminals among us and uses that as an excuse to make more laws and be harsher and harsher on average people she and her enforcers claim are breaking those laws. Yet all the more laws they add and the harsher sentences never reach those few elite who actually are cheating the nation and its people.”

“I couldn’t be part of that anymore,” Eric concluded. 

Beside him, the pirate still looked wholly unconvinced.

“Iffen et’s s’bad ‘ere’n better elsewhere, why not go t’t’ot’er worlds ye been to?”

Eric rolled his head on his shoulders. This was a perpetual question he often asked himself.

“Because… There’s good things here too, and every world has its own downsides. I’ve built something here. Even if I’m not an admiral in the navy anymore, I’ve built up a lot of wealth and power over the years in my own way. I’ve got some sway. And I can and do use that fer good up here on my mountain. Use it to protect folks’n make this world freer bit by bit. And arm folks fer if or when the government comes for ‘em.”

Rahkus again regarded the cat with an interested but still-skeptical look. After a while, he gave what sounded like a measured pronouncement.

“Ye remind me a wot Murchú used t’say aboot Aodh Mór Ó Néill an’ ‘is fight against t’British crown.”

Eric had no idea what that meant, but judged that — given what he knew of the little man and the tone in which it was delivered — it was intended as a complement. He nodded in appreciative acknowledgement.

They returned to silence and stared out at the sea for some time.

“Whelp… S’a strange land Ah’m in now,” Rahkus said after a while with a resigned though not depressed sigh. “Might be Hell, but’cher sound a fair devil at least. So…” 

Rahkus hauled himself up off the ground. He stretched with the soreness of one who hasn’t ridden in too long before he threw a haphazard salute. 

“Wot’s t’order, Cap’n? R’should Ah call ye ‘Cat’n’?”


	8. A new rig and crew

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eric takes Rahkus on a tour of the Admiral’s Reserve and in the process tries to introduce him to other members of the staff and the oddities of the new world in which he finds himself. This includes pegasi, unicorns, horses that are akin to gods, and a panda lycan who know hows to wield a hammer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lady Lei-Lei belongs to a friend of mine. I have borrowed her with permission.
> 
> WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER: dialect, insult to dwarves, implied/offscreen gay horse sex
> 
> Estimated reading time: 27 mins

“Order of th’ day is for you to get to know the ranch,” Eric announced as he levered himself up onto Clío’s saddle-less back. With no need of the pomp and fanfare of maintaining appearances in the town like he had yesterday, Eric rode bareback as was his preference.

“If you’re gonna jockey for me, you’ve gotta know the horses and the crew here.”

Rahkus hoisted himself up into the saddle on Rudy and looked expectant.

“Alrighty!” Eric began officiously as he urged Clío away from the cliff edge. “First thing — important thing! Horses here are… different.”

The pirate shot the lycan an eyebrow-raised look before nodding at Clío. “Ye mean, t’at?”

Eric patted the ancient unicorn’s neck. She twitched an ear backwards toward him.

“Yes. There’s unicorns here. But that’s not all. C’mon, let’s start with the, uh… more normal.”

Eric squeezed Clío’s sides and she shifted from her earlier plod into a lazy lope. Whether by command or imitation, Rudy started up a slightly more energetic canter to keep up with the much larger mare. Eric saw Rahkus initially bounced along ungainly on the pony’s back, but he quickly found the rhythm and sat it.

They took a circuitous route, touring first along the outline of the cliff edge until doubling back past the guest lodge and then down the central lane that bisected the majority of the pastures.

“These here,” Eric said, sitting Clío to a stop alongside one of the pastures, “are normal horses and ponies, like in your world.”

Rahkus looked out at the narrow, deep pasture. It didn’t take long for his one good eye to go wide.

“T’at ain’t normal,” he countered, pointing. Eric looked.

There were six tiny ponies in the pasture they had pulled up beside. One of them, however — the one to which the pirate was pointing — very obviously had wings.

“Ah, yes. Well… We have pegasus here too,” Eric corrected. 

He whistled and the ponies looked up. Rudy whinnied in response to the other small equines’ attention. All of them, including the tiny pegasus, came trotting up to the fence. They stretched their little faces up to huff and snort at the newcomers. The dun pony, who reached his head between the fence’s crossbeams to touch noses with them, was a couple hands taller than the other little ponies, which were roughly the size of large dogs.

“These are Rudy’s mates,” Eric explained. “But pegasus are normal horses or ponies. Just with wings. There’s nothing special about them aside from the wings. They’re just like animals in your world.”

“Ye’ kin ride ‘em?” Rahkus asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Sure. It’s just all the more dangerous if you fall off.”

They moved on and passed by several other pastures. Most were populated with heavy-bodied, thick-neck draft horses with heavily feathered legs. Some even had wings themselves. Eric gestured widely at them.

“This is most of wot I focus on these days. Breeding drafts. They fetch a good price an’earn a respectable wage hauling iron for the dwarves. Townsfolk’ll buy my spare foals and I sell my older mares t’the peasants who use’em for plowhorses.”

The pirate whistled as they passed by some of the behemoth draft studs in one pasture.

“Ah’ve n’er seen sitch great beasts b’fore.”

Eric nodded. “I’ve been crossbreeding them for ages now t’get’em big. Like the old destriers. They’ve gotta be big and strong and heavy, but also need long legs so they can really move.”

“Wot’sa destree’r?” the pirate asked as they moved off away from the giant horses.

“S’a war horse. A charger,” the lycan said. “‘S’wot I used t’raise the unicorns for. Let’s go see them next.”

A few minutes of riding brought them to a large meadow populated by about two dozen unicorns of various descriptions. Most were stocky creatures — though few were as thickly made as the draft horses — with black or other solid-colored dark coats, finely feathered legs, and the standard spike-from-the-forehead style horns. But not all.

Several of the unicorns were distinctly unnatural colors. A pair of otherwise unremarkable unicorn mares were so black they were iridescent purple and their manes and tails were blazing magentas, reds, and oranges. One black stallion also sported a blood-red mane, tail, and feathers. A seemingly matched pair of unicorns — notably the smallest of the herd — had pearlescent white coats that shimmered as they moved. 

Some of the unicorns were unusual in form as well as coloration. A matched pair appeared more deer-like than horse-like in body; the mare with cloven hooves and the spotted markings of a fawn, while the stud resembled some high-altitude shaggy deer with his head, neck, shoulders, and chest draped with thick fur. He also has an unusual horn sprouting from his head; a sort of short thing curled back on itself. But in the coil it formed, there was what might have been a bejeweled spider’s web.

Several other of the unicorn stallions sported unusual horns. Or, in a few cases, a rack of deers’ or elks’ antlers, with the forward spines twisted together to form long spiraling horns. One relatively light-boned black stallion had a predatory skull engulfing his head like a mask, from which a vicious tight-coiled sliver of a horn erupted. 

The heaviest-bodied of the studs — a thick blue roan beast with the upright mane of a primitive draft horse — had a curling pair of ram’s horns encircling his ears in addition to a short spike of a horn. He ambled up to the fence near them. 

Eric could not have prevented Clío from prancing up to touch noses with the stallion if he had wanted to.

“This is Clío’s herd. And that fellow there,” he said, gesturing to the heavy stud occupying Clío’s singular attention, “is Odin. He’s th’ top stud of my unicorn herd. And Clío’s the alpha mare. Of the herd and the ranch,” he added patting her neck. She didn’t spare him even an ear flick.

“Unicorns are cleverer than standard horses,” Eric continued to explain as Rahkus looked on at the horned herd.

“In general, they are about as smart as a young human or lycan cub. About two to three old? They can figure out simple things. Understand speech. Communicate… after a fashion. And the older they get the cleverer they get. To a point.”

This earned Eric both of Clío’s ears. He chuckled. 

“The biggest thing with unicorns is fairness. Like if you give a young cub a biscuit and another cub three, a unicorn will pitch a fit if you try to deal with them unfairly.”

“ _Some of them,_ ” he added pointedly while exaggeratedly looking at Clío, “get snippy if they see unfairness around them. Even if it’s an act. That they were told about beforehand.”

Clío ignored him and nipped affectionately at the rams-horned stallion. 

Eric glared at the mare as she knickered and teased the stallion like a filly in heat. Eric’s ear eventually drifted over to Rahkus’ direction. When he looked over, he offered a sheepish weak grin.

“I’m still sorry about that yesterday. A bit necessary, you understand… Gotta put on a show for the town and all. You’re a’right now though, yeah?”

The tiny pirate offered a non-committal semi-shrug, but eventually nodded.

“Aye. Yer misshapen short men gave me summat fer t’wounds.”

“Dwarves,” Eric offered more gently than he might have otherwise. “Don’t go calling them ‘misshapen.’ That’s just rude. They’re called dwarves.”

“Ah wuz called dwarf,” Rahkus reflected as they moved off away from the unicorn herd.

“Dwarf is a species here,” Eric clarified. “A ‘race’ if you will. Not a condition or a comment on height. You’re a human, even if you’re short.”

As Eric guided them between fenced pastures and river-fed irrigated fields, he nodded to the imposing spike of the mountain peak that loomed over the shelf-like plateau where the ranch sat.

“Dwarves are short, thick, broad, and dense. And I don’t mean they’re stupid. S’like their muscles are made of stone and twice as strong. They live in the mountains. Most of ‘em, anyway. The ones who don’t want to carry on with the clan’s tradition of mining, or smithing, or jewelry, or gem cutting head out into the human world to learn trades and fend for themselves. Most find good work in the human world since each one’s about as strong as three humans.”

Eric patted his mount’s neck. “The ones most interested in horses and riding or other like work tend to gravitate here.”

“An’ th’ dragons?” the pirate asked, looking up at the peak.

“They’re in there too,” Eric nodded. “They were there first. Time was the Atoani Clan — that’s the dwarves — and the Fídi Flight — that’s the dragons — were at war. Way back who knows when. That’s why the dwarves cut this plateau into the mountain. It was originally a battlefield when they were warring with the dragons.”

Eric caught the whisper of “witchcraft’n sorcery” from the pirate’s direction over the sound of their mounts’ hooves.

“They long since figured out that bein’ neighborly was better for everyone. Dragons live down deep where the mountain’s roots run close to the fire in the land’n stoke the dwarves’ forge fires, plus aid in the identifying and mining of gems and such. In return, the dwarves keep them well fed and protected and fetch anything they want so they don’t hafta leave the mountain unless they wish it. But! ‘Nuff about dwarves’n dragons.”

Eric pulled Clío up and Rahkus stopped Rudy beside her. They were down a slight hill from a simple square cottage with an open half door built under an old oak tree. There was what looked like a large, semi-spherical boulder just outside on the “lawn” of the swale. The lycan nodded his chin in the direction of the little house.

“There’s one other major type’a horse here that’cha need to know about,” he admonished. Turning to the house, he raised his voice slightly. “Az? You home? Up for visitors?”

The sound of a large shifting body and hooves on stone came from within the cottage and after a moment a tall, proud, pale bluish-gray equine face emerged.

“‘E’s… Blue? An’s… gems?” Rahkus said with a quizzically-raised eyebrow. 

The large horse, which was indeed blue and appeared to have blue crystals sprouting irregularly from its body, regarded the little human before knickering something in a sing-song, trilling whinny.

“‘Pologies Az,” Eric said to the horse. “E’s new. And I was just introducing him to the idea of avatars.”

The blue horse chuffed and flicked an ear.

“Like I was saying,” Eric continued pointedly to Rahkus. “There’s another kind of horse here in this world ye need to know about. We call ‘em ‘avatars’ because they are like a god or an element’s representation in this world. They’re smart and can speak, though only in their own language. They’re just like people, but are horse shaped after a fashion. This is Az.”

The great blue horse stepped fully out of the cottage in a rather theatrical manner. Once down at the foot of the swale where Eric and Rahkus sat astride their mounts, the sapphire-studded equine inclined his head to them and whinnied a trilling greeting. Eric inclined his head as well and the pirate followed suit.

“Az is short for Azure,” Eric continued the introductions. “Az is an avatar of the sapphire gem.”

“‘E’s a gem horse?” Rahkus asked, seemingly still in awe or simply confused by the massive blue creature. Az stood far taller than either of them while mounted.  
  
“Avatars represent an aspect or element of whatever. Az here is among the gem avatars. He— OY! DON’T!”

Rahkus’ hand shot back from reaching towards Az at Eric’s admonishment. Az’s ears flattened and he side-stepped away from the pirate.

“Y’can’t just pet avatars! S’rude!” Eric chided the pirate. “‘Pologies again, Az. ‘E’s from a different world.”

Az huffed air through flared nostrils and nickered something to the lycan, who nodded. “Aye, ‘e’ll learn.”

The pair continued on in conversation, mostly ignoring Rahkus. Az seemed to speak in his own language, which, to the pirate’s ears, was little different than most horse noises. Eric, seemingly understanding it, responded back in common. 

“I was thinking he might be your new jockey if you’ll have him?” Eric eventually posed to Az. The blue avatar flicked an ear at the tiny human for a moment before tossing his head and huffing again. 

“Well, give it a think. ‘E’s a decent rider s’far as I’ve seen and ‘e’s full grown as ‘e is. A lot lighter for those jumping competitions than any of the dwarves.”

The blue horse huffed a final time before nodding to the pair and retreated disinterestedly up the hill. He sidled up to the boulder and rubbed his head on it. Rahkus gawked as the boulder produced a head of its own, revealing itself to be a massive tortoise rather than stone.

“C’mon!” Eric commanded as he turned Clío. Once they were some distance away, Eric chided the pirate again.

“Ye can’t just pet avatars! They are people like you or me. Ye don’t just touch folk, do you?”  
  
Mildly bewildered, Rahkus shook his head.

“Good!” Eric said more aggressively than he really needed to. He may or may not have had too many of his own experiences of being randomly pet by humans.

“They might be horse shaped, but they are just as smart as any human or lycan or dwarf or elf or dragon. Some of them more so. And since some of them are avatars of gods or forces of nature, some of them are quite proud and expect t’be treated with respect. Besides that, they are all guests here. Residents and employees some of them. They all bring some benefit to wherever they choose to land and can leave whenever they like. They are good lodgers and I don’t want them offended.”

Eric was more irritated than Rahkus really deserved; the pirate didn’t know any better and would learn after all. Plus, Rahkus was also a guest here and could leave at any point, so it wouldn’t do to unfairly belittle him either. Eric tried to calm himself and eventually sighed, more at himself than the pirate.

“But this is why I wanted t’take you ‘round to meet everyone. Avatars are important t’know.”

“How d’ye tell ‘em from others?” Rahkus eventually asked.

“Most’re odd colors or shaped like other creatures,” Eric offered quickly. “Some are big. Real big. Clifford’s about three times the size of an elephant these days. Some even wear garments or armor or the like. And some don’t even have proper bodies.”

Rahkus cast a bushy-eyebrowed scowl at the lycan.

“Wot’cher mean?”

“Well,” Eric responded, trying to think of a way to explain. “There’s a whole herd here that’s made of — best I can tell — water. Or mist, or steam, or snow, or… a load of river pebbles all piled atop one another in a horse shape.”

The pirate clearly didn’t believe the lycan if his face was any indication.

“I’ll introduce you, but not right now. It just occurred to me I need to introduce you to Tony and Ande. ‘Specially since you’ll be working with them real close for a while. Ande’s an avatar, and Tony’s… He’s something of a special case.”

The pirate raised an eyebrow.

“I’ll explain when we meet them. It will make more sense if you see him.”

Eric turned Clío away from the horse pastures and pressed her into a lively canter back to the center of the estate where they had come from earlier when they started the current tour. Rahkus urged Rudy to keep up. When they neared the buildings, Eric slowed the unicorn and the pirate pulled up close alongside. The area was now bustling with people and equines.

Most of the beings that were making their ways to and from the numerous buildings were dwarves, though there was the occasional human or lycan. Several were leading horses, while others were driving, hauling, or pushing various forms of machinery. A couple were even rolling barrels and one was herding a large collection of foals with the help of a massive white and brown dog padding along beside. All of it was alien to Rahkus.

“Wot is all t’is?” he asked, wonderingly.

Eric looked around, trying to identify what was occupying the pirate’s attention.

“Oh, this?” he asked, gesturing to the general business of the area. Rahkus nodded.

“My staff and lodgers and others who come to work here in one capacity or another,” Eric explained. “Training horses, tending crops, bringing in cattle, repairing stuff, making wine or cider or mead, preparing for the next festival. All that’n such.”

“T’ere’s so many…” the pirate said, looking on.

“Of course,” Eric said, almost chuffing in amusement. “I’ve got anywhere from 350 to 400 horses at any given time, a 50 head cowherd, almost 700 acres of pastures and under cultivation with another 150 acres of greenhouses, five workshops and three resident master craftswomen in addition to myself and the master brewer. There’s several dozen folks wot live here, and more besides what come to work here.”

“That there,” he said, gesturing to a large, centrally-located, multi-story estate hall. “That’s the main hall’n lodge. That’s where most folk who work here live. After you sign the manifest, we’ll get you a room in there unless you prefer more unconventional accommodations.”

The main lodge was a grand building with numerous windows. The craftsmanship bore the same stylistic details as the adjacent guest lodge hall that marked it as being of dwarven make.

“Yer familiar with the guest lodge, a’course,” Eric added offhandedly, gesturing to the slightly smaller building in which Rahkus had stayed the night before.

“Those are the workshops,” the lycan said distractedly as he was still obviously looking around for the elusive Tony and Ande. The sounds of a blacksmith at work rang out and the noise seemed to give the cat an idea.

“Let’s go meet Lady Lei-Lei and Triss. If you’re going to jockey for me, you’ll need to know them an’the other core staff here. Plus maybe she knows where we can find Tony and Ande.”

He pointed them in the direction of the workshops, specifically toward the source of the ringing. As they neared, the cause of the sound became clear.

Working at the anvil was a great black and white bear lycan. Its face was mostly white, save for circular black patches around the eyes and a black nose. The white parts of its face, head, and neck were seemingly painted through with light turquoise-y blue designs not all that unlike Rahkus’ tattoos. The blacksmith was also wearing something around its head wrapping where its ears might be. Its arms, where visible, were black and its broad torso and expansive bosom was tightly encased in a ridiculously intricate blue leather corset. The lycan’s lower portions, save for the black footpaws, were mostly left to the imagination as the bear blacksmith was wearing full blue and turquoise skirts that were covered with a workman’s leather apron and tied back in deference to the task at hand.

“T’at’s a… Yer blacksmit’s a… lady?” Rahkus asked, his mouth agape.

“Yer damned right, she is,” Eric nodded reprovingly. “And don’t let nobody tell you any different. That’s Lady Lei-Lei and you’d best treat her like the delicate flower she wants to be. And if y’don’t, she’s liable to rip you in half. Got it?” 

Rahkus nodded as he looked on, clearly confused and unsettled. Lady Lei-Lei certainly looked like she had the brawn to rip much larger people than him in half without difficulty.

Eric watched Lady Lei-Lei wielding her hammer as she worked a piece of glowing steel. Despite her imposing bulk, the blacksmith’s hammer wasn’t very large and she held it lightly, allowing it to whip back and forth in her handpaw with the sweep of each blow. It was a thing of finesse, not brute force. She was guiding the fall of the head through gravity rather than muscling each blow, though it was obvious she could if she had wanted to. The grace of her movements was seemingly at odds with both her size, obvious power, and the nature of her occupation.

They waited until the blacksmith set down her hammer, returned her project to the fire of her forge, and removed the wrap covering her ears. 

“Lady Lei-Lei!” Eric called. She looked up and, upon catching sight of him, waved daintily with a flap of her wrist. After untying her skirt and a quick wash of her handpaws in a bucket near her forge, the bear lycan came to where they still sat mounted.

“Why hello, Admiral,” she said, extending a handpaw. Eric took it and kissed it fleetingly. 

“And who is this colorful little treat here?” she went on, turning her attention to Rahkus without waiting for Eric’s greeting. Rahkus looked stricken as the bear lycan, on her feet, towered over him even as he sat on his pony.

“This is Rahkus,” Eric introduced. “He’s in from another world. You remember Cap’n Johns?” 

Lady Lei-Lei nodded, though it was clear from her glower she was none too fond of the man. 

“Rahkus here’s from the same world. He’s going to join us, I’m hoping as a jockey,” Eric went on. Lei-Lei lit up with a massive grin. With all the teeth she was showing, Eric wondered if the pale little pirate might faint.

“Aaaww… That’s wonderful!” she squealed in a pitch seemingly too high to come from such a large being. “Well, I hope you like it here, Cutie! It’s a lot nicer here than what I’ve heard of yours. We’ll have to chat later though. I must be back to my work — can’t let it get too hot!”

The great bear blacksmith turned and started tying up her skirt again before Eric called out to her.

“Wait! Two things first!” 

Lady Lei-Lei turned to regard him over her shoulder with an expectant look.

“Is Triss in?” Eric asked speedily, gesturing to the neighboring workshop. The black and white bear lycan shook her blue-painted head.

“Nope. She went with the cattle down _to town_ ,” she said, making a face. “She wants her pick of the hides for some new project she’s working on.”

Eric nodded. That made sense. He pressed on as Lady Lei-Lei had a “well?” sort of look on her furry features.

“And have you seen Tony and Ande this morning? I didn’t see them doing their rounds when we were out in the pastures this morning.”

The blacksmith giggled in a far more girlish way than one might expect from someone who wielded a hammer for a living.

“Pretty sure they’re _carrying on_ ,” she said with a suggestive tone. 

Eric flattened his ears to the side. “Of course they are. Any idea where specifically?”

“No, but they seem to like the barns where you keep those… dwarven _contraptions_ … lately.”

“The tractors?” Eric offered. Lady Lei-Lei nodded with a distinct face of displeasure.

“Thank you, Lady,” Eric said as he turned Clío and waved. The great bear waved daintily as she returned to her work. Rahkus kept pace, seemingly eager to get away. 

Now with an idea of where to find who he was looking for, Eric led them away from the center of the estate. He identified various buildings as they passed.

“Those’re the breeding and foaling barns over that way,” he said, throwing a pointing thumb over a shoulder towards a complex of low barns ringed by small, well-kept pens. 

“And that’s the main covered riding arena for the ranch’s estate. Not open to the public, but just for our ranch work. That’s also got the ranch office and my rooms above the office,” Eric continued, pointing out the much taller-peaked massive barn-like building adjacent to the breeding and foaling barns as they passed them. This was where he had taken Rahkus the night before when he had unchained him.

Surrounding the main estate buildings were the utility structures; hay barns, massive equipment sheds that were barns in their own right, and other various storage- and purpose-built buildings.

They had just rounded the edge of one of the larger equipment sheds and were headed towards its slightly ajar front door when Eric pulled Clío up short. As Lady Lei-Lei had suggested, Tony and Ande were indeed here. And they were definitely _carrying on._

The lycan heard the goings on inside the shed — repetitive huffing and little persistent knickers and appreciative equine whines — before smelling it. He doubted the human pirate could sense — let alone recognize — what was going on. Humans had poor hearing and poorer senses of smell. As far as Eric could tell from the man’s face as he looked around at his surroundings, Rahkus had no idea.

Eric cleared his throat loudly before speaking in the general direction of the shed’s open front door.

“Aye, Tony? Ande?”

To the lycan’s superior ears, the huffing and knickering inside the shed paused.

“I’ve got someone I want’chew t’meet when you’ve got a moment. We’ll be at the office when you’re… available.”

Without waiting for a response, Eric turned Clío so that she forced Rudy back the way they had come. Rahkus looked mildly confused, which, honestly, wasn’t new this morning.

“They’re rather… indisposed… at the moment,” Eric said by way of an explanation. “They’ll meet us up at the office.”

They made their way back to the covered arena where they had stopped the night before. Again Rudy and Clío were freed of their tack and Rudy was returned to his stall while the old mare was allowed to wander off to whatever she wished to do with the day.

The manacles and chain were still on the office floor where Eric had thrown them the night before. He scooped up the noisy heap as he walked in, coiled it, and stowed it away in a closet by the door before welcoming Rahkus in.

The ranch’s office was a sprawling affair abbuting one of the narrow ends of estate’s private covered arena. The layout was rather boring — little more than a large low-ceilinged room — but it too showed the heavy, impressive architecture that suggested it was of dwarven make. 

The massive room was scattered about with a half dozen heavy wooden desks and finely-crafted unique chairs. Each chair and desk combination suggested that it was made for a specific individual given the varying sizes and heights. The most centrally-located desk — the one to which Eric gravitated — was bristling with several quills in a large silver inkwell and numerous rolls of parchment stuck into what looked like simple wooden stiens. The rest of the top of the desk was covered with haphazard stacks of parchment. Eric sat behind the desk and began rifling in a drawer while Rahkus wandered around looking at things.

Though the whole office was a large single room, low wooden bureaus lined the walls and subdivided the area to create the individual spaces that housed the different desks. The bureaus were honeycombed with open cubbies filled with rolled parchments or drawers, while the tops of them served as display cases for various awards, relics and tools, and weaponry like rapiers and pistols.

The far side of the room was occupied with a large, low table similar to the long banquet tables in the guest lodge, but much wider. It was strewn with parchment, inkwells and quills, writing slates and chalk, and several large maps. It resembled a larger, if less intense version of Eric’s desk.

The most striking architectural element of the place was the wall-to-wall windows. One bank of windows looked out onto the quasi-city center courtyard formed by the pair lodges, the workshop complex, and the breeding and foaling barns. Light streamed in and anyone inside could see the bustling of the outside. The opposite bank of windows looked into and curved around the covered arena.

Rahkus seemed perplexed and fascinated by the whole thing. He drifted over to examine the glass of the arena-facing windows.

“Ye got winda’s b’tween rooms?”

Eric looked up from hunting through his desk.

“Yep. So, you asked last night about signing my crew’s manifest.”

The pirate was hard-pressed to pull his attention away from the oddity of glassed windows in a ceiling, but he nodded once he had.

“Aye?”

“Ye still want to?” Eric asked, rising from behind his desk with a bound folio of parchment sheaves. He set it on the end of his desk, opened it, and gestured to it invitingly. 

The pirate came to look. Though he could not read any of the names or notes written on the parchment, Rahkus knew a crew manifest when he saw one. He knew the side on the left that all looked like it was written in the same hand — Eric’s most likely — included information on each new crewmember as they joined. The one or two words next to that to the right was the position they joined in as. Beside that there was the date. And the farthest to the right was where people had made their marks. Rahkus was curious to see that most people’s marks looked like proper writing.

Rahkus nodded.

“Ye want me to tell you the terms again?” Eric asked as he began putting in the notes and duty and date parts.

“Naw, et were good terms ye’ told me last night,” Rahkus said as he took the inked quill Eric offered him. 

When the cat indicated where he could make his mark, Rahkus took great pains to carefully draw a fair representation of the knot-work compass rose he had tattooed on his right pectoral. He’d always liked doing something more than just an X like most what couldn’t write. After he was done, he returned the quill to Eric, who made a note under the mark.

“Do you have a family or clan name?” Eric asked, looking up. Rahkus shook his head. “Where are you from originally?” 

“Dubline port. By t’bridge.” 

“ _The_ bridge? There’s only one?” Eric pressed. Rahkus nodded again. “Were there other ports?”

“Aye, but no were s’large’n fer t’merchants’n fishers’n t’like.”

Eric nodded and added to the note under the man’s mark. When he was done, the cat shook out some fine sand upon the new writing and set the manifest carefully back on his desk.

“Wot’cher wrote?” the pirate asked.

“Rahkus of Bridgeport, Dubline.”

The little man crossed his arms over his chest and grinned, looking rather pleased with himself. “S’right proper title, t’at. Sounds fine.”


	9. Pony’s inequinity to pony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rahkus is introduced to one of the many oddities of the Admiral’s Reserve. Tony, the talking pony — who is not an avatar and is inexplicable even by the rules of this new world — also introduces the pirate to some strange ideas. Namely by muddying the waters of what is a person and what is an animal even more than they already were in this strange world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER: dialect, animal rights topics, discussion of exploitation, reference to castration, topical discussion of horse breeding, reference to eating horse, potential speciesism, questions of sapience
> 
> Estimated reading time: 16 mins

The retired navy admiral leaned against the edge of his desk. He was about to explain to the pirate about the utility of origin identifiers in place of family or clan names when the sound of tiny hooves on wood drew his attention to the open office door. 

“Ah, Tony. Ande. Good!” he said in expectant welcome to the pair of little equines who poked their heads into the office. “Come in. I want you to meet Rahkus.”

The pirate leaned against a bureau and watched as the two entered. One was a sandy gold, stout-bodied little creature that stood about the height of a massive dog. The pony had the full, rounded build of a draft horse, including the characteristic thick neck and upright shoulders. But he also had the neat, tapering head and soft rounded muzzle of a pony rather than the blocky head and face of most drafts. His upright mane, massive tail, and ample fetlocks were black, thick, and feathery. 

Beside the pony was a tiny white pegasus with cardinal red wings, mane, and tail. These details in particular captivated Rahkus’ attention. The pegasus’ build was more classically pony-ish, including a short back, a slender delicate head, and pert little ears. Its tail was done up in a tight braid at its base and bound the red plume of the pegasus’ tail into a sort of flag or switch.

While both the pony and the pegasus were small, the pegasus was noticeably smaller. Proportionally, if the pony had been a draft horse, the pegasus would have been a relatively petit standard riding horse.

“Rahkus,” Eric said, breaking the pirate out of his eyebrow-knitted staring at the pegasus. “This is Tony and Ande. Boys,” the cat said, turning back to the equine duo, “meet Rahkus. He’s going t’be joining us here as a jockey.”

“Mornin’,” Tony said with a huff and a toss of his head. Beside him, Ande twittered something in the same sing-song equine language the other avatars had used. “He says hello too,” Tony translated.

Rahkus just gaped, open-mouthed. He had previously been mimicking Eric’s posture of leaning against one of the bureaus, but now he seemed to be hanging onto the furniture for support.

To his credit, the little man recovered faster from the shock of a tiny talking pony than he had the day before when he was introduced to his first lycan. And he didn’t immediately start sputtering about witchcraft and hell. So… yay progress?

“S’at wotcher were sayin’ b’fore?” Rahkus asked Eric, pointing at Tony, when he had finally recovered.

“Yes, but it’s rude t’point at folks,” Eric chided gently. Tony’s little ears swiveled about as though he couldn’t decide between being annoyed or amused.

“Is ‘e,” Rahkus asked, first to Eric, then turned to Tony. “Are ye a ‘avatar’ er sumsich?”

Tony stared for a few beats — trying to suss out the pirate’s accent, Eric guessed — before he shook his whole head. The motion telegraphed through his neck and mane, creating a wave effect in his fluffy black crest. He waggled his top lip, regarding Eric first.

“Where’d you find this one? Sounds like one of the northern island dwarves.”

Eric cocked an ear towards the pirate and an eyebrow at the pony. Tony took the hint and — after nipping at Ande who was clearly laughing, even if in another language — regarded the human.

“Not s’far as I can tell,” the pony answered the pirate. He then flattened his ears against his neck and rolled his eyes at Ande when the pegasus began to laugh harder. Tony evidently decided to ignore his tiny compatriot because he soon straightened up and directed his ears away from the twittering pegasus. “He is, though, for all that that matters. Avatar of small things, like being a small pain in my ass.” 

“Tony’s something of an anomaly even to me,” Eric informed Rahkus as the two tiny equines got into a heated nipping and shoulder shoving match. “I have absolutely no explanation as to why he can speak common. Nor even how it’s possible with a pony’s jaw, mouth, and tongue. I’ve never encountered any other horse or unicorn or even avatar who could manage it. He just showed up on my proverbial doorstep one day asking for asylum.”

Rahkus looked away from the play-fighting ponies with a scowl of confusion.

“Wot’s ass ilum?”

“A-sy-lum,” Eric corrected, trying to pronounce it clearly for the pirate, who was apparently unfamiliar with the word. 

“Basically… seeking sanctuary. Protection. Ye maybe haven’t noticed since you don’t know this world and everything’s strange to you, but I have a tendency to collect… oddballs and strays not well accepted other places. I’ve got something of a reputation for it.”

“And a talking pony raises eyebrows around here,” Tony added, having settled the nip fight by letting Ande get in the last “word.” That is, an uncontested bite to his rump. 

“And things that are too odd sometimes raise scaffolds around here too, if you understand me,” Tony added with a meaningful tilt of his head.

Rahkus did. His recognition was clear enough in his face even before he nodded. “S’witchcraft,” he even offered in explanation. 

Eric cleared his throat strategically and interjected quickly. “Witchcraft or not, most folks prefer to keep their feet or hooves on the ground rather than get hung or stuck in a crow’s cage for being whatever they find themselves as. So,” he said, turning specifically to Rahkus. “It’s best not to mention Tony’s unique abilities to townsfolk.”

Though Tony’s ears had undergone a choreography of responses to the recent direction of the conversation, he eventually nodded.

“True. Though being just a normal pony here isn’t so great either,” he continued. “Being a doted on pet of a noble’s child was a good life while it lasted. When I was a foal and a yearling. And even longer than I might have since I’m so small. But then the adults started talking about when I should be gelded and it didn’t sound so good anymore, so I got out.”

“Wot’s gelded?” Rahkus interjected, looking back and forth between Tony and Eric.

“Castrated,” Eric offered. This didn’t enlighten the little pirate anymore than the original word had.

“S’when they cut your balls out,” Tony snorted and gave a little stamp. 

Rahkus continued to look confused, but this time there was a touch of worry too. “Balls?”

“Stones? Testicles? Jewels? The family goods?” Eric offered, halfway between amused and exasperated by the communication problems despite the shared language. He fumbled for other euphemisms and jargon he knew. “Bollocks?”

That was the one. Rahkus had that nodding look of recognition, then a scowl as he plugged in his newfound understanding to what Tony had said.

“Whatever you call them, I wanted to keep mine right where they were,” Tony huffed. “But I also didn’t want to say anything to normal people and wind up being hung as some abomination. So I came here.”

The pegasus knickered something that, even for those who could not understand the equine tongue of the avatars, was clearly some playful jibe or other in tone and cadence. Based on Tony’s reaction, it was a safe bet it had been at his expense.

“OY! Not in public you pest!” Tony said with a hind leg raised in warning. Ande took his giggling out of kicking range, flying his braided red flag-tail high while making some other point. 

“I don’t care if the human can’t understand you, ‘cuz I’m damned sure Eric’s gonna ask us — meaning me — to teach him to. Right?” Tony demanded, rounding on Eric. 

The lycan nodded.

“Yes, if Rahkus is going to jockey for us, that means he’s going to be riding the avatars who compete. So he needs to understand their language right quick. He already offended Az this morning.”

“S’not hard to do,” Tony observed dryly. Ande apparently agreed. Eric opted for diplomacy and pointedly said nothing on the matter.

“You two are the best team for the job when it comes to teaching folks the avatars’ language,” he answered instead.

Ande puffed out his chest and whinnied something rather self-confidently. Tony nodded. “The only team for the job, you mean,” the pony corrected. Eric offered an acknowledging nod and a shrug.

“So how d’you want it to go?” Tony asked with something like professional resignation. “We could do it like we did with Rorny? Or Lady Lei-Lei?”

“More like how you taught Lady Lei-Lei, but Rahkus will go with you on your duties to start out. Tomorrow, I think. That will give him a real immersion in both the language and the ranch,” Eric instructed. Then, to the pirate, he went on. 

“I don’t know what pirating’s like in your world. Are you up to walking several miles a day? We could get you some shoes if that’d help? Or if your shore legs aren’t up to that, you could ride—”

A huff and a stamp from Tony drew everyone’s attention back to the pony. His ears were back and he’d thrown his head up. Eric sighed and rolled his eyes.

“Don’t start again, Tony. Please?”

“I didn’t say anything!” the pony snapped.

“I know you didn’t, but…”

Ande got in between the brewing argument. Literally. Like a herding dog, he sidled up between Tony and the two bipeds and leaned into Tony’s shoulder while nickering something quietly to the pony.

“Ande’s right. We should get back to it,” Tony commented tersely. “Can’t make this place run without our daily rounds of betrayal, right?”

Without being excused, Tony turned on his tiny heels and trotted hotly out of the office with Ande chirruping in a chiding tone at his side. Eric watched them go and listened until the hooves-on-wood clip-clopping had died away with the distance, then he let out an explosive sigh.

“Wot wuz t’at aboot?” Rahkus asked as he looked on, bewildered, in the direction the pair had gone.

“Tony. He has some… issues… with… Well. Everything in this world,” Eric said, rubbing his furry muzzle and mussing his whiskers. 

“Understandable, since he’s a normal pony for all I can tell. Aside from — you know — being intelligent and able to speak.”

“S’e from ‘ere?” the pirate asked sensibly.

“As far as he knows,” Eric answered, still smoothing his facial fur. “I’ve got my doubts, of course. But, like most folks, he can’t remember much about when he was really young. So you can’t be sure. But he’s a person, right enough. And ponies and horses and pegasus in this world are just animals. Beasts of burden. Livestock. Even though he’s not the same as them — and he knows that — he had to pretend to be one for so long and suffered some of their treatment as a result. Like the threat of being gelded before, like he said. So he identifies with them. He can take slights against them somewhat personally.”

Rahkus continued to scowl in confusion. “But… Ye were no slight’n ponies nor ‘im?”

Eric huffed and shook his head. 

“No. But… Best guess? He took issue with me suggesting you could ride if you’re not up to walking with them. Making a horse do extra work to make you comfortable if you’re not able to do something — something they do every day. Or maybe the idea of you riding while they walked offended his sensibilities, since riding here’s a mark of privilege’r power. He doesn’t take kindly to equines being subservient to ‘two-leggers’ as he calls us.”

“Wot wuz et ‘e said? ‘Bout t’is place runnin’ on betrayal?” the pirate asked suddenly, as though a thought had just occurred to him. It apparently wasn’t a particularly good thought either as his good eye and jaw were tight. His ruined left eye was mostly unresponsive to his facial expression, save for some awkward pulling of the scarred skin.

“One’a m’mates wot ‘ad a bit’o t’word t’im sed ‘e heard t’lowest parts a Hell’r cold’n froze over’n saved fer traitors,” Rahkus explained as he glanced back towards the door. “And et were snow on t’peaks oot t’ere, aye?”

“You still thinking this is hell?” the lycan asked with probably too much of a sigh behind it. The pirate was slow to respond both in word and gesture.

“Ah dunno, tell t’truth,” he said to the floor contemplatively. He eventually returned his gaze to the cat. “T’ere’s too much ‘ere. An’ none offet’s sensible. People wot look like beasts’n beasts wot t’ink’n talk like people? Or beasts t’at’r people but talk like beasts? Wot’s et but hell?”

Eric decided again to ignore the “this isn’t hell” angle again. He had no hope of convincing the superstitious little man this wasn’t a place from his world’s or his religion’s mythology. He took a while to think about how to frame his explanation so it would make sense to the man. He was pretty certain the pirate had no experience with any sort of animal husbandry, and he knew that the human came from a world where the line between “people” and “animals” was a lot clearer than it was here.

“So… Ye need some background on things first before Tony’s ‘betrayal’ comment makes sense,” the retired admiral started out with a sort of professorial tone. 

“This ranch produces a lot of different goods’n services. Wine, beer, mead, hay, straw, cattle, beef, hides’n leather, iron and steel works, wood works, riding lessons, health mashes, saddles’n other riding equipment, farrier work, and many other things besides. But it all centers around the horses. That’s where it all starts. At the heart of it, I breed and raise horses for sale, meat, and labor. And Tony acts as my primary teaser stallion.”

Unsurprisingly, the little man quirked an eyebrow at the phrase. Eric anticipated the question.

“Teaser stallions are the ones that test whether a mare is in season. Find out if she will accept the actual breeding stud. They are invaluable to a horse breeding operation like this one. You get—”

“Wot? Ye don’t jist put ‘em t’get’er’n let ‘em do t’eir business?” the pirate interrupted with an amused and somewhat incredulous look. 

“You can, but your stallions’ll get beat up a lot more that way,” Eric explained. “Most stallions are interested and ready to go all the time. Surprising, I’m sure,” he added with a bit of a grin to the other man. 

“But the mares are only interested for a short time every month or so during late spring and summer, and they’ll put up a good fight if a stallion bothers ‘em if they aren’t interested. A mare can drop a stallion dead with a well-placed kick if he won’t leave her alone. And most stallions aren’t bright when they’ve got breeding on their mind, ye know?”

Rahkus raised his eyebrows and nodded with a look of familiarity, though Eric assumed it was not with horses.

“So, safer for the studs,” Eric continued. “Plus you get so many more pregnancies and good strong foals early in the year with a good teaser stallion or a crew of them. And Tony is amazing at it. He can not only smell the mares’ pheromones like a animal stallion, but since he’s got the mind of a person and can talk, he can communicate to the rest of the breeding team about a specific mare’s readiness and behavior patterns.”

Rahkus seemed to think about this for a while. “Wot aboot Ande? Cannea t’avatars do et too? Since ye kin speak t’eir tongue?”

Eric shook his head. “Avatars might look like horses, but they aren’t. They are a different species altogether. They could lead an animal stallion around as a teaser and watch for behavior signs in the mares just like any other person could, but they can’t smell a mare’s pheromones like Tony can.”

“So he and Ande walk the ranch each day during the breeding season to scout for mares who will accept a stud. When he finds one, he tells Ande and he flies off to the breeding barn to tell whoever’s there so they can get her bred.”

Again Rakus puzzled through this process and Eric left him to it without interruption. Eventually the human started to scowl.

“So… ‘elpin’ ye wit’ breeding ‘is womenfolk’s wot ‘e were sayin’ is betrayal?” the little man eventually asked.

“Yeah,” Eric nodded. “Though calling the mares ‘women’ isn’t accurate since they’re animals. But that’s about the jist of it, as far as I understand his objection. In helping me breed more mares better and produce more foals, he’s helping me use the mares and to bring more horses into the world to be sold or used themselves. Though he says ‘exploit’ rather than use. Or ‘subjugate.’”

Rahkus cocked his head in confused contemplation. The lycan could sympathize since it was confusing to him too.

“S’why’s ‘e do et t’en? Iffen ‘e t’inks ‘e’s sellin’ oot ‘is own kind?”

Eric opened his mouth to answer, only to close it again.

“I can only speculate, and it occurs to me I should be doing less of it to you,” he observed apologetically. He chided himself for not thinking of this earlier. He would need to apologize to Tony when he next saw the pony. And when next Tony was in a mood to listen.

“S’not my place to be telling Tony’s stories or his mind to you. He’s more than capable and willing to do that himself. Ye’ll be working with him, so you can ask him. I’m sure he’ll tell you… well,” Eric paused, thinking. “I’d bet he’d tell you some of it. The parts he knows anyway.”

The lycan interrupted the pirate’s brewing question and tried to head off more conversation on the topic by pushing off from the desk.

“C’mon. S’about time for lunch,” he said, gesturing to the door. “Since you’re crew now, I need to introduce you around to the really important part of the whole place — the galley!”


	10. Of buildings, bloodwork, and beast(men)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eric and Rahkus head to the main hall for lunch. While there, Rahkus learns more about lycans, and Eric learns more about the human.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wherein I try to describe architecture. No real warnings here other than a mention of eating horse meat.
> 
> Estimated reading time: 17 mins

The stable master and the pirate traded the relative dark of the ranch office for the blinding light of midday in the now largely deserted quasi-town square. Eric led Rahkus towards the large building he had earlier called the main lodge.

The building resembled the guest lodge in style and aesthetic but was massive by comparison. Even from the ground it was clear that the main lodge was many times larger and of a different shape than the guest lodge. Where the smaller building was a relatively tall, broad, and shallow building, with a central hall and wing organization, the main lodge was closer to being a displaced city block rather than what one might call a lodge. Though it was difficult to tell from the ground, Rahkus knew from the morning’s ride that the main lodge had a squarish footprint.

As with the guest lodge, the main lodge screamed its dwarven make and their militaristic past in its heavy exterior stonework. However, unlike the guest lodge, it was only partially wooden, with stone being the predominant material. Had he ever seen them, Eric might have described the main lodge as being designed along lines common among abbeys or utilitarian fortresses in Rahkus’ world. The massive blocky structure sported large circular structures on each of the visible corners that were reminiscent of short, squat towers, which added to the fortress-like air. Beside each of them rose two taller, narrow pillars that were clearly chimneys given the smoke that wisped from a few of them. 

Despite this stronghold-esque aesthetic, the attention to intricate detail, copious windows, and doors on the ground level made it clear this was a residence that supported a decently-sized community.

The front of the building that faced into the estate’s town square was divided into three equal segments separated by a pair of gaping arched passageways where portcullises would not have looked out of place. The central segment had a single, large, ornate wooden door and many expansive, mullioned windows that looked into a comfortable gathering hall with numerous lounging chairs and small tables arranged around a heavy stone fireplace. The windows looking into this communal room suggested a vaulted ceiling. The wall above lacked windows, but did not want for decorative stonework, including gargoyle-esque downspouts about halfway up, and narrow arrow slit-like openings at the top of the wall from which steam or white smoke was currently escaping.

The two wings to either side of this central segment seemed to be rooms, dotted as they were with actual individual, equally-spaced doors in addition to the windows on the ground level. A second and third row of shuttered windows were stacked above them. Railings at the top of the building suggested there was a rooftop walk. The tower-like structures on each corner lacked windows, but were also ringed with iron railings, suggesting that they too were accessible.

The ranch owner led the pirate through one of the arched passageways — almost tunnels through the thick building — and into an internal courtyard. The encompassed outdoor space was mostly occupied with a sprawling kitchen garden and an outdoor dining patio paved in flagstone and decorated with heavy iron tables and chairs. Some tables were occupied with ranch residents and employees taking lunch. They were mostly dwarves, but there were also a few lycans and even a many-headed horse that was almost certainly an avatar. All were talking and eating with one another.

Eric opened a door into the building, inviting Rahkus in. Inside was another hall, much like the dining hall in the guest lodge, but larger. The long tables were sparsely filled, again with a collection of mostly dwarves, but the occasional lycans and a human. Beyond the hall was a massive kitchen. It did not take an architectural genius to figure out the ovens and roasting pit of the kitchen backed up to the great fireplace of the gathering hall seen through the front windows of the building. 

The master of the kitchen was easy enough to spot; a hulking, tusked boar lycan who was as wide as he was tall, if not wider.

“C’mon. I’ll introduce you t’Cookie,” Eric urged, indicating the boar. “He’s an important one to know. Also an important one to not piss off.”

To that end, the lycan again schooled the human on handwashing at a wash station just outside the dining hall before they approached the kitchen. It took some time and Eric had to repeatedly instruct the pirate on washing his whole forearms and under his nails since Rahkus seemed to think splashing water on himself was sufficient. Once the man’s hands were deemed acceptable, Eric waved to the boar.

“Good afternoon, Campbell.”

The boar looked up, squinting small eyes but angling large bat-like ears to locate the call, then waved a ladle in answer to the greeting.

“G’day Eric,” answered the tusked chef as he came around from whatever he’d been doing to leave the kitchen momentarily. 

Campbell was mostly dark brown-black, with a thick coat of slick hair — not fur — covering all exposed parts of his body save parts of his face and his hands. His face was splashed with greys and browns, with most of the gray down around his long, upturned snout and most of the brown up around his head and fluffy, heavily ear-ringed ears. Along the top of his skull and along the ridge of his neck was a brushy upright mane almost like one of the draft horses. This ridgeline was done up in intricate upright braiding with an occasional decoration popping up like flowers out of grass. His hands had four fingers, the two central ones being large and powerful, but the two exterior ones being small and opposable, effectively giving him two thumbs per hand. Each finger was tipped with a hoof-like claw. 

The porcine cook was wearing a voluminous white shirt with sleeves cuffed back at his wrists behind meaty, short forearms. On the bottom, he was wearing what looked to be an intricately looped and tucked collection of green and gray plaid fabric that approximated loose, billowy pants. The shape of them made him look all the wider at the legs than he was at the chest. Over it all was a well-used apron. 

Like Lady Lei-Lei had earlier this morning, Campbell towered over Rahkus. He sniffed and snorted, then smiled down at the little human with a grin lopsided from asymmetrical yellowed tusks that protruded from his mouth.

“And ‘hoos this colorful chap, then?”

Rahkus paled and stepped back from the new, large person looming over him. Though he nodded in greeting, ostensibly to be polite, his posture was tense and he was watchful of every move the large cook made. Eric noticed and shifted himself to give the clearly uncomfortable little man some cover.

“This is Rahkus, our new jockey,” Eric answered. “I know you’re as good as blind Campbell, but no need to crowd ‘im.”

The boar lycan snorted a laugh and waved them off as he stepped back a few paces.

“‘Pologies there, Rahkus. Didn’t mean nothing by it,” he said as he snuffled and retreated back to the kitchen.

“S’aright,” the pirate said, though his tone didn’t match his statement. “It’s, ah... good t’meet’che.” 

“Cookie here was also an old hand at sea for years before he put ashore here,” Eric explained, trying to broker a slightly better introduction. “Rahkus is from another world and has been sea-faring most of his life.”

“Ack! Well, no wonder!” Campbell boomed as he collected a couple bowls. “I thought ye had the look of a sailor about you. And I expect there weren’t any lycans in your world, then, aye Rahkus?”

Rahkus, coming out from behind Eric where he had retreated, shook his head. “No. T’ere’s, ah… only folk like me en m’world.”

“Humans,” Eric offered. 

“Aye, humans,” Rahkus agreed.

“Human?” Campbell asked quizzically, looking up from whatever massive cauldron of tasty smells he had returned to stirring. “An’ here I thought you’d finally found a halfling to ride for us, Eric?”

The cat snorted. “You ever know a halfling to be sea-faring? Or willing to get on a horse?”

The hog cocked his head a moment, then returned to stirring. “Nope. I expect not. But I don’t know many sailors who can jockey, neither. You were the first one I met who fancied both horses and boats.”

“Fair enough,” Eric said as he took the pair of bowls Campbell handed out after filling them with ladles of steaming something.

The chef bid them a good afternoon after telling them where to find bread. Eric returned the well wishing and herded the pirate out to the basket of lunch rolls. Rahkus collected a pair and some spoons on the lycan’s instruction and they made their way to a open spot at one of the long tables.

Once seated, Rahkus fell on his food as he had the night before. Eric went to fetch them drinks and came back to find the little man inspecting the contents of his spoon closely.

“Wot’s t’is?” he eventually asked, picking out a grain of rice.

“S’rice,” Eric answered as he sat down. “It’s a kind of grain. Like barley or wheat, but it grows in water.” 

Rahkus poked about in the bowl, picking out ingredients and inspecting them.

“T’is is like a soup from ‘ome,” he eventually proclaimed. “W’it fish’n crab’n mussles’n clams. Sometimes potatoes. But no rice.”

He continued to poke at his food, sampling the pieces individually. Then, as though struck by a thought, he cast a conspiratorial glance at the kitchen to where the porcine cook puttered. When he looked back at Eric, it was with contemplative knitted eyebrows.

“Ye don’t eat much pork ‘ere, Ah’spect. Aye?”

“Nope,” Eric said, busily eating his own food. “Meats are mostly fish, shellfish, or fowl of one sort or another bought down in Havmunn, rabbit’n hares snared in the fields, or beef’n horse we raise here.”

Rahkus thought a moment. He tore his roll in half and dipped one side of it into the creamy fish stock remaining in his bowl. Then he cast an appraising look around the indoor hall. Eric looked around too, having a sense of where the human’s thought process was taking him.

There were about a dozen other people sitting in the hall and maybe half again outside sitting on the patio. They sat in small groups with the occasional loners taking lunch by themselves. Of those who were visible, about one in four was a lycan. There was one other human besides Rahkus and the rest were dwarves.

“Ye don’t ‘ave any rabbit lycan here, then?” Rahkus asked, not hiding his cataloging of the diners.

“Not currently,” Eric agreed. Lycans currently in the hall besides himself were a wildcat, two mongrel canines, a ferret, and a red fox. 

“Though, if we were to hire on a rabbit’r hare lycan, we’d still serve meat from the animal rabbits’n hares, simply because if we didn’t snare them, the fields’d be overrun, and there’s no sense in wasting meat. But, we’d try t’make provisions for them so it wasn’t slamming them in the face every time they came in for meals. Not all lycans get bothered by it, but enough do it’s the polite tack t’take.”

“No bird lycan?” Rahkus continued.

“Not here,” the leopon lycan said. “They exist, but they’re rare. And they tend to keep to themselves. ‘Cept for the corvids’n gull lycans. Sparrow lycans too, but they’re hard pressed to find work around human settlements ‘cept as messengers since they’re so small.”

“Ahr t’ere horse lycans?” the pirate continued. “R’cattle?”

Eric looked up from his mostly empty bowl, chewing on his own bread. “Yes, they exist. But you won’t find them around anywhere like this place. There’s something of a taboo about it, as you might expect. ‘Specially since so many non-lycans think we’re the offspring of beastiality. We’re not, but havin’ horse lycans around a horse breeding operation, or cattle lycans on a ranch, comes with a level of awkward in most places that few folk want to deal with.”

The cat paused to take a swig of his drink. 

“And the few horse lycans I’ve met tend to have a similar opinion as Tony about raising and selling horses. So they wouldn’t want to be around a place like this anyway. They tend to keep away from most human-settled places in Ownteli. Most of the prey species lycans do. Humans don’t think of themselves as predators, but they are.”

Eric interrupted himself to drain the rest of the broth from his bowl. He set it down and licked his muzzle.

“In general, we’re not the most common in the Nation of Ownteli. And we don’t tend to gravitate to human-settled areas. Most just want to go about their lives and work without dealing with the idiot superstitions of humans.”

Rahkus looked up from drinking the broth out of his bowl with interest, though he didn’t pause his noisy guzzling. Eric took the apparent curiosity as an invitation to elaborate.

“I can’t tell you how many humans — in this world and others — try to either worship us or kill us at first sight. It’s ridiculous, really. And the asinine stories they tell, pfft…” Eric waved the idea off with a dismissive gesture of his spoon.

“Like wot?

“Guh,” Eric made a face. “There’s so many. That we’re diseased humans who were bit by an evil infected animal and are now cursed to roam the land as half-formed beastmen that devour children at the full moon. That we are like the avatars — representatives of the gods — but just in different animal guises. That we are primal spirits from some dream world or other that inherently bring wisdom from some special magical insight into nature or something hoaky like that. Or that we’re what happens when humans and animals interbreed. Or the rejected early experiments of evil blood alchemists.”

“Wot’s blood alchemists?”

Eric set about collecting and arranging his empty dishes as he thought about how to explain the central non-horse-based technology of this world to this superstitious otherworlder. It hadn’t gone so well with Captain Johns the night before and Rahkus was a good deal less educated — though admirably clever — as far as Eric could tell.

“They are the people who do blood alchemy,” Eric answered briefly, continuing quickly since that was no proper explanation and he knew it. 

“Some people here call them ‘wizards’ or ‘potioneers,’ but they’d more properly be called ‘scientists’ — specifically ‘biochemists’ or ‘endocrinologists,’ or maybe even ‘endocrinological engineers’ from what I’ve heard from other worlds. Though, from what I understand of your world from what Captain Johns has told me, I think you might call them ‘natural philosophers.”’

The lycan didn’t need to see the human’s patiently expectant blank stare to know this long-winded jumble of arcane words was not helpful to the man.

“So… ye know when you’re part of a crew? Every part’s got its own role and there’s a system of commands that make stuff happen properly?”

Rahkus nodded as he picked at bread crumbs.

“Bodies — horse bodies, human bodies, lycan bodies, anything living — they all got a sort of system of commands and controls that make specific things happen too. Like there’s the one command that makes a cub lose its baby spots and get its adult coat. Or human and dwarf males get their face fur. Or a filly foal start winking at stud colts. Or all manner of changes. Ye follow?” 

The man gave a sort of non-committal partial nod.

“Well, the blood alchemists have figured out how t’make things like potions and biscuits and tablets and all such that give the body different commands than what it has normally. Or discovered natural things that can do that. Like how the dragon stones can slow down aging to almost nothing. Or with the twinning twig — something the blood alchemists have cooked up in mimic to what some avatars can make — can make a body have twins.”

Returning to his analogy, Eric continued. “It’s just like if you took the same crew on the same ship with the same captain, but you switched the captain’s maps or they decided that instead of being a pirate ship, it was going to be a fishing ship… You’ve got all the necessary tools and labor already there, you just change the orders that are given. You’ll just end up somewhere different doing something else.”

Rahkus seemed to puzzle over this for some time. As he did, looking off into the middle distance of thought, he distractedly stacked his empty dishes as Eric had.

“‘Ow’s et work?” he eventually asked, looking up with a brighter and clearer eye.

Eric shrugged. “That’s beyond my ken, I’m afraid. I know how to use’em, and can tell you what they do, but how they work… that’s not my area. I know it’s not magic, but it might as well be for all I know of it’s machinations.”

The pirate accepted this answer with a shrug and a nod. From what he had described of himself, he likely found himself in that situation frequently.

“S’where to next t’en, Cat’n?” Rahkus eventually asked, standing. Eric rose too, taking his collection of dishes with him.

“First we take these back to the kitchen, then I think we should find you a berth, aye?”

Eric proceeded back towards the kitchen with Rahkus in tow. There was a multi-leveled cart with wooden bins beside one of the entrances to the kitchen. The stable master explained that they were each for a different type of item; one for bowls, one for plates, one for steins and mugs, and another for utensils.

“Wot’che think ovvit, then?” asked Campbell, popping up from behind the half wall that separated the kitchen from the dining area. 

Startled by the sudden appearance of the massive boar beside him, Rahkus dropped his bowl as he dodged away.

The shattering of pottery on the wooden floor, plus Rahkus’ abrupt movement, poofed Eric’s tail three times its usual size and raised his scruffy mane down his neck and back. But he stayed stock still even as the human tripped and fell backwards beside him and then scrambled away and back as he verbally fumbled over apologies for the broken dishes. Campbell, meanwhile, started coming around from behind the wall and out of the kitchen asking what all the fuss was about. Which only made the little man scrabble backwards faster and all the more awkwardly.

Rahkus eventually gained his feet after several attempts and much commotion, only to flee outside through the door that led to the patio and gardens. Campbell made to pursue, confusion and worry creasing his small porcine eyes, but Eric caught him by a meaty upper arm.

“No!” he said firmly. “Leave ‘im be.”

“But is ‘e alright?” the chef asked, large fluffy ears tracking the direction of the door. “I didn’t mean to surprise him.”

“I know you didn’t,” Eric said as he let go of Campbell’s arm. “And I think he’s probably fine. He’s uh… he’s just not used to lycans yet, I expect. I’ll go see to him. Sorry about the mess,” he added, nodding to the shattered dishes.

“S’alright. I’ll get it,” the boar said, casting a squinty-eyed glance past Eric and through the windowed doors out to the patio. “You tell him I didn’t mean to startle ‘im?”

“I will,” Eric assured the other lycan with a reassuring pat on the shoulder.


	11. A horse of a different color

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eric tracks Rahkus down to the gardens. After somewhat recovering from his earlier panic, Rahkus encounters more avatars and wonders if, instead of being in hell, he has slipped into the land of the fairies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warnings for this one.
> 
> Estimated reading time: 13 mins

Outside in the courtyard garden, Eric looked around for Rahkus. He could not immediately find the little man by sight due to trellises of peas, beans, and upwardly trained squash obscuring easy view of the garden, but was able enough to track the smell of human adrenaline through the pathways that were cut through. He eventually tracked the human to the small mixed orchard. Rahkus was leaning against a pear tree with his head back and eyes closed. Eric made a point of approaching noisily so even the human could hear him.

“You alright?”

Rahkus, who was breathing far more heavily than a sprint through the gardens would suggest for someone as relatively fit as the little man, nodded though he did not open his eyes or shift from resting his head back against the tree.

“Campbell sends his apologies for having startled you back there,” Eric offered. Rahkus nodded once in recognition, but said nothing besides.

“You’re… not fond… of tall, bulky folk being too close t’you, I’ve noticed,” the lycan observed.

Again, the pirate nodded, and again said nothing, focusing instead on slowing his breathing down.

Rahkus remained silent, save for his heavy breathing. Though the little man said nothing, he seemed conscious of the lycan’s waiting presence. 

Eventually, the pirate pushed away from the tree and opened his eyes. He pulled the looped and knotted ribbon tie off of his tailed headfur. When untied, his red hair came almost down to his shoulders. Despite the efforts of some of the more medically-inclined dwarves at the guest lodge the night before, it was still lank and dirty in places. The little man didn’t seem to notice or mind as he ruffled it with both hands before he then smoothed it back in a sort of self-petting gesture. He did the same to his red chin tuft and eyebrows. Retying and tailing his headfur seemed to complete the calming ritual.

When he finally looked at Eric, Rahkus took on an air of strained joviality.

“Ye were sayin’ aboot findin’ me a new bert’?”

Eric cocked an ear curiously. Rahkus had been obviously nervous at meeting Lady Lei-Lei, who towered over him even when he was mounted. He’d shown clear discomfort upon initially meeting Campbell, going so far as to even semi-hide behind Eric at the time. And now there was this fairly literal panicked flight when the massive boar had appeared suddenly beside him. Though he was trying to appear calm now, his stress still showed in his tense posture and he still smelled of adrenaline. But he also seemed intent on changing the subject, so Eric decided not to press the matter for now.

“Yes!” he agreed, adopting a similarly false light tone. “Let’s go see Vesna.”

They meandered circuitously around the gardens for a bit. Rahkus had fled fairly deep into the center. Eric led the way through the other arched passageway that let out into the quasi-town square in front of the building. At the mouth of the passageway, Eric took a left and headed to the first door there, but when he went to knock on it, he found the little man was no longer close behind him. Instead, the lycan found the pirate standing with head cocked in confusion. Eric followed the direction of Rahkus’ gaze.

A quartet of horses — actually three avatars and a standard horse — were making their way as a pack around one of the buildings. One of the avatars had a rainbow harlequined coat.

“Wot…” Rahkus started distractedly.

“AYE! You lot!” Eric shouted at the quartet who seemed intent on rounding the outside of the breeding barns without being noticed. The trio of avatars looked up. 

“What are you sneaking around about?” Eric demanded as both of his ears cocked off to the side in annoyance.

The harlequined avatar was the ringleader by his positioning and body language, while the other two avatars and the horse — the taller one white-bodied with black mane and tail, while the shorter one black-bodied with white mane and tail, and the horse a bay respectively — hung back.

“You lot don’t need to be hanging around the barns,” Eric addressed the colorful miscreant, whose ears swiveled manically and who huffed and snorted through a playfully wiggling nose. 

“And put him,” the lycan added, pointing at the bay gelding, “back in his pasture.”

The trio of avatars, led by the multicolored one, all began talking at once, whinnying in the sing-song equine trill of the avatar language and generally causing a racket. They jostled and pushed each other and eventually Eric put up his paws for silence. Which was wholly ineffectual.

It was only when Rahkus appeared beside Eric that the noisy host of avatars hushed because they immediately circled him to investigate.

“Erm…” the little man balked, finding himself surrounded by inquisitive equine faces, all huffing curiously at him with ears pricked attentively. Even the horse, following his intelligent quasi-brethren, snuffled at the man. Rahkus stood in the middle of the attention, not apparently scared, but cautious and not moving suddenly.

Eric slapped a handpaw over his face.

“Rahkus,” he eventually sighed. “Meet Harley, Castor, Pollux, and Heinz,” he said, gesturing to the rainbow avatar, the smaller black avatar, the larger white avatar, and the horse respectively.

“Collectively known as the ranch’s resident pains in the tail,” the lycan added, lashing his own. Harley looked up from sniffing at Rahkus and shook his head and neck ruefully with a contrary squeal.

“Fine. ‘Professional pranksters,’” Eric amended, rolling his eyes. Harley knickered, seemingly pleased with himself.

Rahkus was cautiously stroking Heinz’ nose when Eric cleared his throat.

“This is Rahkus, our new jockey,” Eric continued with introductions. “And you can stop sniffing at him like a bunch of dogs. He’s from another world and I’ve been telling him avatars are people deserving of respect, so please act like it!”

Castor and Pollux raised their heads and huffed chorus-like responses that ran together as though the pair were finishing one another’s thoughts.

“That’s none of your business, you cheeky bastards!” the stable master hissed. The pair knickered back another amused question in unison, to which Eric gave an exasperated sigh. “No you don’t! They work the same as they always do. And you know it! Now GET!”

Throughout all of this, Heinz had been enjoying Rahkus’ attention. When Eric ordered the avatars off, making a large “shoo” gesture, the avatar trio turned on hooved heels and trotted off with easily translatable whinnying laughter, then cantered as they got a few lengths away. Not to be left behind, not even for nose pets, Heinz bolted off to rejoin his compatriots.

Eric coughed from the dust the quartet raised, then sighed heavily.

“Ah t’ought ye sed t’be respectful a avatars?” Rahkus asked with an amused cant to his bushy red eyebrows. Eric snorted with ears back.

“I did. But that doesn’t mean they can do anything they please and get away with it. Plus some avatars deserve more respect than others. And those lot are a right pain most of the time.”

“Why keep’em aboard?” the pirate asked, still looking amused. “Can’t ye jist put ‘em off?”

Eric sighed again, this time an explosion of annoyed breath.

“That’s not really how avatars work,” the lycan explained. “They kind of appear and decide to take up residence in a place if you’ve attracted their attention. Gods only know what attracts any given avatar’s interest in a place. So… you can’t just fire them. Or ask them to leave. You can try, but that usually results in earning their ire. Which can be bad. On the other hand, if you keep them contented, they tend to leave you gifts or benefit you or a place in some way.”

“Sounds like  t’púcaí, ” Rahkus said thoughtfully as he looked after the equine group.

“What’s that?” Eric asked.

“ Púcaí’r among t’daoine maithe,” Rahkus explained. “Some call’em fairies’r fair folk. But t’púcaí look like horses’r colts a strange colors’n forms most times. T’ey kin be help or hind’rance. If ye treat ‘em, t’ey help. If ye anger’r disrespect’em, t’ey wreck mischief on ye.”

Eric cocked his head thoughtfully. “That’s a pretty good description of avatars, honestly.”

Rahkus nodded sagely. He looked like something had clicked into place for him. “S’wot’che do for’em? An’ wot’t’ey do for ye?”

“Harley’s the first avatar to join up with me, back before I even had this ranch here,” the lycan explained. His tone now was mellowed with a smile of nostalgia. “He was instrumental in those early days. I couldn’t have made it financially without him. He was a master jumper back then. Made lots of money. I think I gave him something to do that got him seen. He likes attention.”

Rahkus nodded at this, then suddenly looked shocked. “Ye rode ‘im?!”

“Of course,” Eric answered, scowling with some confusion. “Why?”

“ Púcaí’ll lure ye t’t’eir backs’n take ye far an’wide an’drop ye where ye’d ne’er know a soul.”

Eric thought a moment then nodded in agreement. “Yep. He did pretty much do that. Riding the jumping courses with him landed me here.”

Rahkus looked aghast. Then his one wide green eye went even wider and his pale skin went paler. Eric was amused to see it made the tiny orange and brown spots on his face stand out all the more obviously.

“Ye want me t’ride ‘im? An’ ot’er avatars? An’ ye sed t’ere were some wot were made a water? Like t’aughisky?” Rahkus looked stricken and eventually sat down unsteadily. Rahkus looked up at Eric with the inconsistent gaze of one suddenly intoxicated.

“Ah’m no in Hell. Ah’m in’t’land a t’fair folk.”

The lycan looked down, perplexed at the little man. He wasn’t sure what the human was talking about now, other than understanding he was again suffering another wave of stress. Rahkus was certainly going on about his world’s mythology, though the lycan didn’t know enough about it to know if the “land of the fair folk” was better or worse than “hell.” Regardless, it seemed to be having a similar effect on the man as the idea of devils and hell did yesterday.

“An’ Ah signed yer manifest,” Rahkus wailed, seemingly to himself. “T’ride yer púcaí’n aughisky. Ah made m’mark…” he said, throwing his head into his hands.

The lycan just looked down at the man with an ear cocked and his tail lashing slightly. He tried to remind himself how jarring being in another world could be, especially at the beginning and if you weren’t used to it. But this was getting a bit tiresome.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Eric pointed out as the man seemed to be despairing. 

“If you want to work here, but you don’t want to ride, I can certainly find something else for you to do. And you don’t have to work here if you don’t want. You’re not trapped here. Though,” Eric added in a pragmatic tone. “I  _ strongly _ recommend you lay low for a few days at the very least. You’re really easy to recognize, and if you don’t know the ropes, you will certainly run afoul of the powers that be down in the town since you don’t know this world yet. Then you’ll be no better off than if you had stayed in your world. You’re pretty well stuck in this world, and you need to learn the basics of the world, but that doesn’t mean you have to stay up here if you don’t want to.”

From the ground, Rahkus had tucked himself into a little ball. He was sitting on his backside with his knees tucked up to his chest and his head buried in them and his arms. He could be quite compact when he wanted to, Eric considered. He wondered idly if the man had ever tried to stow away anywhere. He’d likely be good at it. 

The little human ball moaned something even less intelligible than usual.

“Didn’t catch that,” Eric said.

Rahkus lifted his head out of his arms and knees. “Ah sed, ye cannea break contract wit’t’fair folk.”

Eric cocked an ear as he processed the statement.

“Well… while I have had my admirers in the past, I don’t think that’s what you mean by ‘fair folk.’ So I’m pretty sure I’m not one. Whatever they are. If you don’t want to work here I can just put a line through your mark on the manifest.”

Rahkus looked at him wide-eyed and pale. “Wot’d t’at do?” he asked in a tone of horror. 

The lycan cocked the other ear, not really sure why the man was getting so worked up, but not wanting to make it worse. It seemed everything he said was making it worse.

“Uhh… it would just mean you weren’t part of the crew anymore.”

Now Rahkus looked confused.

“An’ t’en wot?”

“And then…” Eric continued awkwardly. “I’d invite you to stay as a guest for a few days so you can get your bearings in this world, try to find you a job more to your likings with my contacts, and send you off with at least some shoes and some travelling rations even if you insisted on leaving?”

Whatever the little man was expecting, it wasn’t this, though at this point Eric wasn’t sure he could anticipate the human’s reactions with any success. 

“So… You wanna go see if Vasne can find you a room?” the cat nudged, offering a handpaw to the pirate still huddled on the ground. “Or we can go strike you from the manifest?”

Rahkus looked from the paw to the lycan. He eventually reached a tentative hand out and took the paw. Eric helped haul him quickly to his feet then quickly released his hand. They stood staring at each other expectantly for a few beats.

“To the office or… go see about a room?” Eric eventually asked.

Rahkus peered at him cautiously with his one good eye. The intense, sideways look reminded Eric of a chicken peering sideways at something it didn’t know. Those who undersold the birds as mindless cowards had no experience with them; such scruitinizing looks often preceded a hen’s decision to peck and devour something whole, or a cock’s (often ill-advised) decision to fight something far larger than himself.

After a few moments’ assessment, the colorfully-plumed little man apparently opted to take on what, for him, was the great unknown.

“A room.”


	12. A berth fit for captains and kings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eric takes Rahkus to get a room in the lodge. In the process, Rahkus meets his first dwarrowdam, which could have gone better. Ultimately, the rather domestic task of getting a room becomes an adventure because glass and large private spaces were things unknown to the pirate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER: questioning gender, class privilege, class privilege disparity, implied kenophobia
> 
> Estimated reading time: 15 mins

Back at the front of the main lodge, Eric knocked on one of the front-facing doors. Rahkus stood beside him, scowling at the distant scratching shuffling noise that came from inside. After a moment, a hearty female voice demanded to know what they wanted.

“Afternoon, Vesna,” Eric called through the door. “I got a new crewman who needs a berth.”

There were some more scrabbling noises accompanied by a noticeable jangling, reminiscent of the keys of a brigsman. The metal-on-metal tinkling got louder as did what seemed like the grumbling of the female voice of the approaching resident.

The door opened suddenly, revealing a short, stocky woman only slightly taller than Rahkus. She had warm brown skin with thick black hair so shiny it seemed iridescent in places. She was wearing a dark red jerkin over tight-fitting dusty green breeches. She had a wide belt to which was attached a prodigious ring of keys. 

The detail that drew the little pirate’s attention was her black, beaded beard however.

Much like his own scruffy beard, the woman had a black puff of hair sprouting from her chin and trailing gamely up the line of her jaw, but it petered out before it had any hope of connecting to her ample sideburns. Similarly, wisps of dark hair travelled up the side of her cheeks along the side of her mouth as though they had ambitions of one day colonizing her upper lip as a mustache. The woman’s small beard was impeccably groomed and decorated, with colorful beads in an array of emerald shades and intricate tiny plaits coming off the points of her square chin.

The bearded woman apparently noticed Rahkus’ attention and quirked a thick eyebrow at him.

“I like the new chinfur style there, Vesna,” Eric complemented. “The green beads go nicely.”

“Why, thank you,” the dwarf said, stroking them appreciatively as she stepped out of the doorway and closed it closely behind her. “I thought they would. But it’s a  _ beard _ , Cat. Not ‘chinfur.’”

Eric shrugged with a bit of a grin. Vesna turned to Rakus.

“You like it too? That why you’re staring so hard to make that one eye pop out?” she admonished teasingly to the little man, who dropped his gaze. She chuckled playfully. “S’like you’ve never seen a dwarrowdam before.”

“Ah’aven’t,” Rahkus managed, looking up curiously. He cast a glance to Eric, then back to Vesna. His one good eye roved up and down the length of her, stopping noticeably on her breasts, which were tightly packed into her jerkin, before continuing up to her beard and then finally her dark brown eyes.

“Are ye… Are ye a woman?”

Vesna’s look of mild amusement at Rahkus’ obvious survey of her turned dark and affronted at his question. Her mouth curled into a snarl but Eric interjected before things went too far south.

“This is our new jockey, Rahkus. He’s not from this world and where he’s from doesn’t have dwarves, Vesna. So I’m sure he didn’t mean any insult by the ignorant question.”

Rahkus scowled at being called ignorant, but Eric ignored him.

The dwarven woman’s irritation cleared with a raised eyebrow of unconcealed interest. “Ohhh… an otherworlder! And yes, I am a woman,” Vesna added. “You’n I will need to chat sometime,” she added.

Rahkus offered only a confused and mildly concerned grin in response. 

“Don’t worry,” Eric soothed. “She’ll want to hear about the technology of your world. And oh boy, Vesna,” the lycan said, turning back to the dwarf with a spreading grin across his furry muzzle. “I’ve got something to show you. And the elders, if you can arrange that?”

The little woman’s dark eyes grew large in excitement.

“I can! What’cha find?”

“A gift from my friend from his world,” Eric said with a mischievous grin and a gesture towards Rahkus. The pirate also looked curious.

“What is it?” the dwarf demanded.

“After,” Eric said much to Vesna’s pouting annoyance. “Rahkus needs a room.” To the pirate, he added, “This is Vesna. She’s our châtelain. Effectively the keeper of the keys and mistress of the main hall and its systems.”

“And the cat,” the dwarf added with playful venom, though it was obvious it was for Rahkus’ benefit. “This one,” she said, gesturing at Eric, “needs watching.”

Rahkus cast an uncertain look between the two, clearly unsure what to make of this. Eric quirked an annoyed ear.

“Come on, Vesna. I still haven’t fully convinced him I’m not a devil so—”

“You are a devil!” she shot back with an accusatory finger up in his face. “Not telling what’cha got. Pure evil! Now then,” Vesna said, matter-of-factly as she threw an arm around Rahkus’ shoulders and started to steer the little man back towards the central portion of the main lodge. 

“Let’s get you a room, Rahkus lad.”

The pirate, initially too surprised to put up much opposition to the insistent dwarf woman, was manhandled by Vesna into the central gathering hall with the massive fireplace. The sitting area was mostly empty at the time, though it was full of a variety of what looked like comfortable seats for casual socializing. Eric followed behind the pair as Vesna, with her keys a-jangling, directed them up a set of stairs set off to the far right side of the room.

“Nothing available on the ground floor at the moment, I’m afraid,” she said as they turned a corner in the switchback stone stairway. “But I’ve got empty spots on the second floor and the third floor. You have a preference?”

“Uh… wot’s better?” the pirate asked, still looking more than a little flustered about what all was going on.

“Well, both have a walk facing into the garden,” the dwarf said, halting the group on what was apparently the second floor. “Second floor means fewer stairs to climb to get to the dining hall and the ground, but more stairs to get to the roof walk, if you like being up high. Also the laundry’s on the second floor. Third floor means more stairs to get down to the ground and the hall and the laundry, but fewer stairs to get to the roof. Better views too.”

“Any wot see t’sea?”

“Sure,” she said, herding the little troupe up another flight of stairs.

“Up there’s the roof walk access,” she added pointing up to the final flight as she directed Rahkus towards a door.

“Outer doors need to stay closed in case of rain or weather, but they’re only locked in case of attack,” the dwarf rattled off as though giving a tour.

Rahkus shot a scowling look of concern over his shoulder at Eric. The lycan gestured with a nod of his muzzle back towards Vesna, indicating he should pay attention.

The dwarf walked out the door and onto a covered walk path. They were on the inside portion of the great squarish building facing into the courtyard garden. The walk path was ringed on the building side by numerous interspersed doors and glass-paned windows and on the garden side by a decorative and clearly sturdy iron railing interrupted periodically with a stone and ironwork pillar that supported the ceiling and roof.

“M’afraid the one up here that faces the seaward side is the farthest possible corner of the building. Longest trek of the whole lodge if you opt for this one,” Vesna explained.

Rahkus wasn’t entirely listening though he followed dutifully along. As Vesna explained about the first-come, first-served nature of room claiming, he took in this new place. His eye was mostly fixed on things beyond the railing down into the courtyard garden. Though they were on the third floor, each floor must have been considerably taller than in most of the few inns he’d visited because they were quite far up as far as he could tell. He couldn’t tell very well, however. Leaving aside his difficulty with distances, there were few shadows down below since it was hardly an hour past noon. Still, the place was comfortable since the whole walk was shadowed from the full ceiling. There had been a pleasant warmth in the sun, with a bit of the sea breeze mixed with the thinness of the elevation that drank up a good portion of the seaside humidity.

“Here it is,” Vesna announced as she consulted her massive key ring and selected a key. She put it into the sturdy wooden door’s ornate lock. With a twist and a satisfying metal-on-metal clink, she pushed the door open and gestured broadly for the little man to enter. With some additional coaxing from Eric, Rahkus walked into the room.

They called it a room, but to the little pirate, it was far more. He had expected merely a room, like what he might find in an inn, but this place was in the first place a sitting room with a simple wooden table and chair, a ceiling half again as tall as the Eric, and evidence of other rooms beyond. And all of it was immense! He was sure that two of Eric’s sort could lie head to head across the breadth of this front room and maybe not touch the walls with their feet. 

“Wot…” he said in stunned confusion. He took some halting steps into the first of what looked to be several rooms, but then stopped, hesitant.

Vesna followed in close after the pirate without paying much attention to him or his reactions. She began opening windows. Eric followed, but tucked himself in a corner out of the way.

“Being so high up and facing mostly westward means you won’t want for warmth,” she said, unlatching and opening the glass portions of the windows inward. Rahkus stared, dumbstruck at what she was doing. She seemed not to notice.

“But you’ll also get one of the best cross breezes in the whole lodge from here. Off the sea,” she continued as she went on to the next one. “So you shouldn’t get too hot, either.”

Rahkus came close to Vesna’s elbow as she fussed with the second window. He touched it tentatively when she put it in place. She couldn’t miss his look of disbelieving wonder at that point. 

“What’s wrong?” she asked, cocking a heavy eyebrow at the pirate.

“Ah get glass?”

“Of course,” she said with the same sort of dismissive chuckle, but this time with a measure less certainty. 

“Glass panes hinge inwards. Shutters hinge outwards. On cold and windy nights, if you fold in spare blankets between them when you latch’em, it’ll keep you warmer, keep the draft out, and keep the glass protected better than the shutters alone. And—”

Rahkus did not initially notice that Vesna had stopped talking. He was looking closely at the glass panes and their iron housings. He ran inquisitive but cautious fingers over them.

“What are you on about, Rahkus lad?”

The pirate took his hand away quickly as though he’d been caught at something he wasn’t supposed to be doing.

“Ah ain’t n’er been somewhere s’fine as t’ave winda’s wit’glass innem.”

“Oh… Uh, well,” Vesna fumbled, clearly not sure what to make of the poor man’s apparent awe over something so — to her — commonplace as glass. “Windows all have glass in them here. At leastways because of the Atoani Keep. We’ve got some glaziers in there.”

Rahkus nodded, but still with that half listening look to him.

The dwarven woman moved off from the windows to the far left corner of the sitting room. She cleared her throat to draw Rahkus’ attention. Once she had it, she indicated what looked like an odd quarter-round fireplace or hearth. It appeared to be built into the corner of the room, with the chimney rising up along where the join in the wall would have normally been. Under it was a quarter-round of solid stonework around its base, about a meter out from the fireplace, jutting up out of the wooden floor.

“You likely won’t be needing heatin’ in this room, save for in the dead of winter, but if you do, this is your heating,” she said, indicating the semi-circular fireplace. 

“The other side of it’s in the bedroom, so you can be warm here in the sitting room and in bed.”

Rahkus came to look at this curious contraption. While he was used to a fireplace being the sole source of warmth in buildings — the few times he could really remember being indoors — he was not used to such unusual architecture. Round stonework and brick, not to mention a fireplace that was built into an internal wall where there had been no apparent chimneys to be seen on the roof aside from the eight sentinels at the corners of the massive building, was not something he had ever seen.

“If you want all the heat in here,” Vesna continued, indicating a wrapped wooden handle to the far left side of the open mouth of the fireplace. “You slide open the shield here, and close it in the bedroom. If you want the bedroom getting all the heat, you slide this side closed,” she said as she demonstrated by sliding what looked like a brushed curved iron shield from left to right. This metal covering entirely closed off the semi-circular fireplace’s maw. “And open the other side.”

“Or,” the dwarf shrugged. “You can open both to heat both rooms. Or close both to stifle the fire.” 

Vesna moved off from the odd quarter-round fireplace and patted the wall as she made for the back room.

“The walls will warm up if you have it going, and they hold heat. Most folks put their beds along one of the walls during winter to keep warmer. But don’t get nothing flammable too close to the pit, you hear!” she demanded. “Keep everything as far off as the stonework, and you’ll be fine.” 

Rahkus followed her as she made her way into the back room. It was currently empty, save for the matched pair to the quarter-round fireplace in the near left corner and an empty wooden bed frame, a low table beside it, and a wooden chest at the foot of the bed on the left side of the room. 

This portion of the room also had what to Rahkus was a gargantuan window, the likes of which he had only once glimpsed in the captain’s stateroom on the British ship. The unthinkably large window looked out westward towards the sea. Rahkus could see the expanse of dark blue-green horizon that was the sea out at a distance past the edge of the cliff. The cliff edge itself was some ways off, but the little man knew from the night before he could clear it in a fast sprint. And there was nothing between this window and the ocean view

As the dwarven woman busily opened the window, Rahkus drifted over, enchanted. He leaned on the window sill, which was just at the right height for his hands, and took a deep breath of the sea air coming off the coast and up the mountain. There were other things to it as well — the whispers of smells from the town below — but mostly it was the salty crispness of ocean breeze.

On some level, Rahkus was aware that Vesna was still talking, but he was having a hard time focusing on her words. The view from this grand window, with the ability to see the sea for leagues and the height of it all, put him back in the crows nest of his old ship. Even though it had been only four or five days ago, it felt like a lifetime ago.

The lack of movement proved this was not the view from a crows nest, however. Rahkus was hit with a wave of dizziness and gripped the window sill hard. This whole being on land issue might take some getting used to.

When the dizziness passed, Rahkus turned his back on the window to settle his stomach. What he saw inside unsettled him in another way, however. 

Looking back at the room and down the short hallway to the sitting room beyond only drove home how big this place was. The bedframe was large enough Rahkus was sure he could fit himself, his mate, and perhaps a whore all at the same time in it once there was a mattress. Yet it looked dwarfed by all the empty space around it. And that was only the right side of the room which Vesna had called the “bedroom.” 

What was a lone body to do with so much space? 

It was like a hold with only one crate of goods in it. Or an abandoned ship. That thought made him dizzy too, so for a while he just held onto the windowsill and looked at the floor.


	13. Contraptions of consequence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The tour continues! While the concept of a private, multi-room flat with several glassed windows was mindblowing to the 17th Century pirate, a self-contained, personal privy that doesn't smell is downright alien.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wherein I describe a quasi-steam punk bathroom. And the fixtures. And plumbing. And the toilet chemistry. And basic water and sanitation systems. Seriously, this was mostly me playing architect and civil engineer, plus handwaving some sanitation-related biochem in text.
> 
> Estimated reading time: 17 mins

Though Rahkus was entranced by the massive window — all full of glass and entirely openable, as the bustling Vesna was demonstrating — several unrecognizable furnishings on the right side of the room drew his attention.

“Wot’s… all t’at?” he asked, pointing.

The object of his attention was a large stonework basin, roughly a half a meter tall and long enough to fit at least a dwarven man. The thing was built into the wall. Or it was coming out of it since the walls were also made of the same stonework. Also attached to the wall and coming out just above the foot of the basin was a stone wash bowl on a carved stone pillar about a meter tall. Much like the fireplaces, the base of the pillar had a similar curving metal shield door and a half-round of raised stone at its base.

The stone wash bowl jutting out of the wall sat just below a brass fixture. It looked like a little cast horse head wearing a full bit and bridle emerging from the wall with mouth agape. It even had little chain reins attached to the bit. The reins were pulled back to a small hook on the wall above it. The stone bowl had a similar cast bronze horse head fixture on its side, but this one looked like it was diving into the larger basin. This little horse did not wear tiny chain reins, bit, or bridle.

“That’s the bath and the hand-washing basin,” Vesna answered with palpable horror in her tone. She cast a glance at Eric before shifting quickly back to Rahkus. Her eyebrows were peaked and her mouth tight and drawn. Even her beard’s beads seemed to wiggle with worry. 

“You do know how to bathe and wash, do you not?”

The pirate looked perplexed at the woman’s obvious concern and gestured back at the lycan. 

“Ah know ‘ow t’wash. And ‘e ‘ad some ovvis mis—” he stopped himself. “Uh… Some dwarfs bath me. Last night. Ah t’ought t’ey were set t’drownin’ me, s’Ah dinnea pay no heed t’where t’ey were doin’ et. T’ey sed Ah stink.”

Vesna cast another pained glance at Eric and then back at Rahkus before stroking her beard as a sort of self consolation.

“You do,” she admitted in an apologetic tone. “I thought it was just because you’d been out among the horses all day.”

“Well, we were that as well,” Eric offered. “But my understanding of his world is that the hygiene level is what we might see in our most…  _ deprived _ … residents.”

Rahkus cast a glance back and forth between the two with an eyebrow raised. He didn’t look offended or slighted so much as confused and even amused by this odd obsession of theirs. And he said as much.

“T’ain’t natural goin’ full body int’water like t’at,” he concluded.

Something clicked behind Vesna’s dark brown eyes. Her previous worry was replaced with the flinty-eyed glare of one who’s domain has been challenged.

“Now you listen here, Rahkus lad! You  _ will _ be clean if you are to live here,” she explained. Forcefully. 

“There are  _ too many _ people living in  _ close quarters _ under this roof, and too many animals on this place, to invite pests and grime and the illness they bring inside of doors,” she snorted. Her stance widened and she crossed her arms. Her head dipped slightly as she glared challengingly at the little man through bushy eyebrows.

“The blood alchemists and their magics can only do so much! A body’s got to start with  _ keeping clean _ .”

Rahkus piqued an unconvinced eyebrow. And, for the first time, he did not seem surprised or cowed or afraid of this new person who was getting close to yelling at him and had the posture of a bull about to charge. 

Vesna raised her chin as she tried her best to look down at the pirate. Though Rahkus wouldn’t recognize it, Eric saw in the miniscule twitching around her eyes, the tiny movements of her pupils, and even the cant of her beard as she looked over this odd little otherworlder that she was calculating. Strategizing. Sizing up her target for the best one-shot that would achieve her goal.

“If you’re not clean, or if you stink, you’ll get no quarter in the galley. Campbell’ll throw you out.”

Eric restrained a laugh because he knew what Vesna was doing and laughing would break the spell. But she could not have picked a better strategy. In truth, Campbell wouldn’t allow anyone to go without when there was plenty — which was most all the time — but Rahkus didn’t know that.Still the cook, with his keen sense of smell, would certainly set limits on what was acceptable in his kitchen and the dining hall by extension. And he had been known to eject those who came too often straight from working in the stables without cleaning up.

Eric felt a pang of guilt about his appreciation of Vesna’s jab and its efficacy. The little man had likely spent the majority of his life in a state of semi-constant starvation, making food a strong motivator. But it was still impressive watching Vesna do one of her things.

The strategy seemed to work. Rahkus cast an uncertain look to Eric and then back to the dwarf when the lycan didn’t come to his rescue.

“‘E didn’t b’fore. When me’n ‘im,” he said, gesturing to Eric, “went in fer lunch.”

Vesna met Rahkus’ uncertain tone with a derisive chortle. 

“Of course he didn’t! You went in with the stable master, who was introducing you around as a new member of the crew. Right?”

Rahkus nodded as the uncertainty reached his face too.

“Well, the Cat here’s got more class than to go ‘round introducing you to folks as ‘Hi, this is your new co-worker. Also, he stinks, in case you hadn’t noticed.’ And Campbell likely either thought you were a mess from being out with the horses, or he guessed Eric here had a good reason bringing you in to lunch anyway. They’re both of’em polite beasts after all.”

“So,” the dwarven key keeper punctuated with a preemptively victorious huff. “If you want to live here and eat, you’ve got to wash. And if you don’t know how or you don’t do it right, I will  _ personally _ make sure you learn.”

While that statement, if said by someone else with a wholly different tone, might have been suggestive, in Vesna’s mouth it was a growling threat. 

Rahkus apparently decided it was best to err on the side of caution with Vensa. A wise move when interacting with dwarven women in general.

“A’right,” he eventually answered, trying to sound nonplussed. “S’ow’s t’at contraption work, t’en?” he asked, nodding in the direction of the stone wall bowl and basin.

Vesna nodded in a teacherly manner.

“This is a sink, and this little lady here,” she said, patting the bronze horse head fixture above the sink, “gives water. You let her reins down like this,” she continued, unhooking the chain loop from the hook. “And out comes the water.”

Indeed, a stream of water started pouring forth from the little bronze horse’s mouth into the bowl. 

“And just like with a real horse, you pull back on the reins when you want her to stop,” Vesna continued, reversing the process. 

Rahkus was entranced.

“‘Ow’s et do t’at?!” he exclaimed, coming close and peering at the bronze fixture. “Where’s t’water from?”

“Didn’t you see the cisterns on the roof corners?” the dwarf asked incredulously. “They’re hard to miss.”

Rahkus wasn’t listening, but was instead looking up into the brass horse’s mouth and fiddling with the reins to start and stop the flow of water. Each time he pulled the tiny chain reins they pulled the little bit shafts that hinged in the corners of the fixture’s open mouth. Something inside clinked each time.

“But ‘ow’s et work?” he asked. “An’ ‘ow’s t’water s’clean?”

Vesna cast a confused glance at Eric. He offered a slight explanation of his understanding that internal plumbing didn’t exist in the pirate’s world, or was at least not common. 

“There’s pipes in the walls that bring the water from the cisterns down here,” Vesna started after blinking away some of her horror. “We get enough rain most times to keep them filled up enough for decent water pressure and flow, and when we don’t, we ask Regina to help if we are in true need.”

“As to how the water is clean,” Eric put in. “The cisterns have a system of fiber, sand, and charcoal filters to keep out big things, and there’s special formulations from the blood alchemists to keep water free of smells and disease.”

The pirate still didn’t seem to be listening. He was enraptured with the water fixture. Eventually, Vesna was able to instruct him in the basics of using the sink and how it interacted with the bathing basin. The water came first into the sink and then out the side horse head fixture’s mouth into the bathing basin. The basin’s base was slightly angled down away from the sink and inwards towards the wall. At the foot wall corner of the basin was an open hole. A brass contraption that somewhat resembled a barrel’s bung with oiled leather skirt around the edge sat on the side of the basin.

“In the winters when most folks will have their fireplaces going, the water will be warm because the pipes run along the chimney flumes that are in the walls too,” Vesna continued on. 

“We can’t get piped hot water up here the way the ground floors can. But if you want a warm bath, there’s this little fire pit in the sink’s pillar that works the same as the fireplaces,” she continued, indicating the thing by sliding open the metal shield. Inside its maw looked just like a smaller version of the fireplaces.

“If you get it going a half hour or so before you want to bathe, the sink will be hot and that will warm the water that runs through it and into the bath. Your sink fire shares the same flume system as your neighbor’s fireplaces,” Vesna added, patting the wall. 

“Just like your fire places share a flume with your neighbor’s sink fire over there,” she said, pointing to the far wall.

“An’ wot’s t’at t’ere?” Rahkus asked, gesturing to the other item near the opposite end of the bathing basin. 

The thing appeared to be a stone or heavy chair made of pottery with a hole in the seat. Beneath it was a shallow, squarish copper or brass basin on runners. Beside the chair was a large earthenware jar. The chair thing was not attached to the basin like the sink, but was instead tucked away beside it and in the crook of the little partial wall that provided some visual privacy from the backroom while still getting in light from the windows. 

The dwarven woman stroked her beaded beard repeatedly and could not hide her look of concern. The glass beads clacked about as she stroked it hurriedly.

“It’s the ordure chair. You… You do know how to use one? Right?” she asked, shooting a side-eyed look at Eric. The lycan only poorly hid his amusement at her shocked horror. She glared at him, promising retribution with her look, which only amused him more.

The human didn’t notice however. Rahkus scowled thoughtfully and went over to examine the thing. He looked down the hole in the seat.

“S’a privy? But a chair?”

Vesna cast another questioning look at Eric. He nodded. She confirmed, but Rahkus was already busily exploring the chair. He had pulled out the basin and cocked his head in confusion at its contents.

“S’… dirt?”

“Yes, and there’s worms in there too,” the dwarf said. She fetched a slotted trowel from a cubbie alongside the chair and carefully turned aside some of the dirt, revealing a squirming mass of red worms. Rahkus made a face.

“They’re good little workers!” she protested. “And don’t you hurt them! They do the work of breaking manure down into dirt,” she explained. 

“You do your business sitting there, then you put some of this here,” she added, indicating the jar next to the chair. Rahkus opened the top of it to find what looked like fine ash. Vesna took the wooden scoop out about half full of the fine light gray powder.

“That’s compost ash. Something the blood alchemists make. You sprinkle that on top of the manure and put some dirt over all of it. The compost ash stops the smell of the manure, kills anything in the waste that could cause illness, breaks it down, and calls the worms and they break it down more.”

Rahkus just peered at things, not really looking like he understood.

“So,The basics are, you sit there,” Eric summarized. “You make your waste. Pull out the bin, sprinkle the compost ash over it, then put some dirt over it, and push the bin back in under the chair. It won’t stink or make anyone sick and it turns it all into soil for the fields.”

“Ah ain’t ne’er heard ovva privy won’t dinnea smell,” the pirate considered. “Ye gotta empty et?”

“Of course.”

“Where? Oot t’window?”

“ _ NO! _ ” Vesna howled, a cross between horrified and scandalized. The intensity of her shock set her beard’s beaded braids to jangling. Rahkus looked startled by her outburst.

“I don’t know what is done in your world, Rahkus lad, but you don’t fling ordure bins out windows.  _ Or anything! _ Don’t fling things out the windows, you hear me?!”

He nodded, assuring her he understood. 

“S’wot’che want done wit’ et t’en? Ye got night men wot come collect et?”

The dwarven châtelain squatted down with a huff and pulled the basin back out on the runners. She indicated a line on the inside of the basin about two thirds of the way up the side. 

“When the soil makes its way to here, you pull the bin all the way out, flip up the lid sides here,” she added, showing that there were indeed hinged lid wings on either side that fit together in the middle. 

“Then close it up and take it down to Talpa. She’s something of a blood alchemist and handles the soil side of our agriculture and the cleanliness of the place. And she’ll give you a new bin.” Vesna threw a questioning look over to Eric. “Has he met Talpa yet?”

“Not yet, no,” Eric said. “I hadn’t thought to. Haven’t had to introduce an otherworlder to our bathrooming systems in many an age.” 

The dwarf glared at him reprovingly. “So you let me do it instead, aye?” 

“I hadn’t thought of it, honestly. But you are a stickler for our systems and makin’ ‘em work here, so you’re likely the best t’explain ‘em anyway,” the lycan added with an apologetic shrug. She glared at him more before returning back to the pirate.

“When you have to make your water, you do it here,” she said, indicating a raised copper or brass trough and splash shield against the back of the bathing basin. 

Like the bathing basin, the trough bottom sloped downward towards the wall with a small hole at the base.To the right side of the thing, between it and the wall, was a sort of long boxy thing with an obvious lid mechanism. From that ran a downward sloping brass or copper pipe that disappeared into a hole in the wall right beside the wash basin.

“Since the person who lived here prior was male too, it’s already set up proper for you. We’ve got a different rig for those who need to sit or swat to make their water,” Vesna explained. 

She opened the lid portion of the long boxy thing and gestured for Rahkus to come next to her to look. He did and crouched beside her as she was to look at the contraption.

The long boxy thing had a funnel-shaped opening on the left side coming off the side of the trough that opened into a series of three small square trays with mesh sides, each slightly lower than the one before. At the right side was a similar but opposite funnel-shaped device running out into the pipe that angled down and into the wall. Each small square tray contained a small amount of differently colored power that looked like sand or pumice.

Rahkus peered into this alien contraption as the dwarven châtelain rambled on about what, to him, were arcane magics involving words and concepts he had no idea about. Vesna explained how the different colored powders were different kinds of separator ash that the blood alchemists made. Though Rahakus nodded at appropriate times, his relatively blank, slightly interested look betrayed his lack of comprehension.

“The short version is, Rahkus,” Eric put in after Vesna had finished her explanation. “You piss in that.” 

This Rahkus could understand. He nodded.

“Piss has important elements in it,” the lycan continued. “So it goes through that filter box where the different separator ashes pull out those important elements so we can use them for other purposes. When the trays get too full, you pull them out and take them to Talpa. She’ll take’em an’give you new ones. If you do it right, and put everything back in the right spots, everything will be clean and won’t smell. You’ll help keep disease away and keep the ranch running proper. Got it?”

Rahkus looked up contemplatively before nodding.

“Aye.”

Vesna gave the pirate a narrow-eyed look. “Explain it.”

Rahkus took the command with an amicable but tired nod. 

“Ah shit in t’at,” he recapped, pointing at the ordure chair. “An’ t’en Ah pull oot t’bin, poot sommov’t ash on et, use t’spade t’ere t’turn over t’dirt. But not harmin’ t’worms.” He shifted over to the urinal’s filter box, which was still open in front of him. “An’ Ah piss in t’ere,” he said, waving at the trough, “an’ et goes t’rough ‘ere t’get oot important bits. An’ when any ovt’bins get full, Ah take’em oot, close t’lids on’em, an’take ‘em t’Talpa.”

“Ah dinnea know ‘ow any a t’is works,” the pirate noted with a wry grin and a peaked eyebrow. “S’sounds like witchcraft’n potions’n unnaturalness. But,” the pirate continued in what increasingly sounded like a weary voice. “Ah gotta be clean iffen Ah want t’eat ‘er t’live ‘ere, an’ clean water comes outta t’ere T’fire places can keep t’rooms warm’r heat t’water, but Ah gotta keep anything wot can burn away from t’stones on’t floor. An’ Ah cannea fling not’ing from t’windows.”

Rahkus stood and sighed. He moved liked he ached and was far older than he actually was.

“Ah ne’er ‘spected hell’r t’lands a t’fair folk t’be so complicated,” he added thoughtfully. “But Ah ‘spect et’s wort’et fer a’privy a me own wot don’t stink an’not gettin’ sick’n a berth s’big as t’is an’getting fed.”

Eric and Vesna cast glances at each other at the pirate’s pronouncement — the dwarf with piteous surprise and Eric with a sort of ‘what can you do?’ sort of look — but they eventually nodded. The dwarven key keeper fished around on her massive ring and freed one of the countless iron keys. She offered it to the pirate.

“Welcome home?”


	14. Too tired for clowning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's been far too much new, strange things in Rahkus' life lately for him to put up with being the butt of jokes too. He takes his life in his hands and tells off the demon stable master.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER: reference to prostitution, emotional exhaustion, dialect, potentially offensive talk of shortness, loneliness
> 
> Estimated reading time: 14 mins

After some logistics — getting basics like soap, a cord for the roomkey so Rahkus could wear it, a log holder and firewood, and retrieving the hammock he had used the night before from the guest lodge — the stable master had left the pirate to his own devices. “To have some time to get settled in,” Eric had said. 

But Rahkus didn’t rightly know how to do that. 

He had never had so much space to his name before, let alone the fineries of what came with that space. Windows with glass in them. Not just one, but two hearths. Multiple rooms and whatever the blazes all the bathing and such was. Or privacy. Or quiet. Or… well, he didn’t know what to call that something that made you feel lonely and adrift on unknown seas.

From his earliest days, Rahkus couldn’t remember being this… alone. When he was still living with his ma, there were always the other women and the men who came to them to put into port. Or the other street children. When he was a child and living with Murchú, he had a roof and a hearth and the old man. There had been quiet then too. No bed save for some sackcloth most times, but there’d always been the fisherman and often his mates. And then on the sea, there was always somebody somewhere closeby, whether a body liked it or not. The only real place to get to be by oneself was in the crow’s nest. Rahkus had liked being able to retreat there sometimes, but this was different.

He sighed as he looked down from his current perch.

Down in the courtyard, there were a few folks taking dinner outside on the patio. Most of those present were in pairs or small groups lingering over their drinks and chatting. A few people went to walk through the gardens, but whether that was just for a stroll or to do some work was hard to tell since most stopped to look at things and occasionally stoop to pull weeds.

Rahkus figured he should go meet his new crew. But on his own time without the odd cat demon nursemaiding him around and showing him off. He hadn’t the stomach for it though. Especially not for going back to the galley with the pig demon. He didn’t have the stomach for that either. 

Yet, Rahkus told himself. He didn’t have the stomach for it  _ yet _ . He’d get his landlegs under him and he’d figure out this new place just as he had when he’d joined a new crew before. But, for now, he figured he’d just watch them and try to get a sense of them.

And then the cat demon showed up. 

He came out of the large glass doors that led from the galley hall to the outside patio. Rahkus couldn’t hear him from this distance, but Eric seemed to be talking to the groups. Asking a question to which most shook their heads. Eventually, the cat looked around, then looked up in Rahkus’ direction. Rahkus stifled the urge to duck behind a column and instead waved back when the odd captain waved at him.

After sighting him, the cat disappeared into the central hall only to reappear a few minutes later at the far end of the covered walk path almost opposite of where Rahkus’ new massive cabin was. Again he resisted the urge to run and hide. That wouldn’t do any good. You should never run from predators and besides that, the cat had been nothing but good to him so far. Well, aside from the whole song and dance at the docks and through town. But Rahkus could understand the need for a lord to keep up appearances in public. That was one of the few things that made sense about this mad world and the strange demon “Cat’n.”

The pirate supposed it was more the oddity of it all he wanted to get away from. But he couldn’t so there was no sense in it.

“Good evening,” Eric greeted when he was close enough for polite conversation. Rahkus nodded to him in acknowledgement and returned the greeting.

“How’re you settling in?”

Rahkus glanced back at the open door to his cabins and the open windows. He had taken great pleasure at being able to examine them and open them and set them just how he wished them to be. But eventually he just shrugged.

“Dunno, trut’t’tell. Ain’t ne’er ‘ad more’n a small sea chest a me own sundries’n trinkets t’calle me own. Don’t ‘ave even t’at now. Likes wise at t’bottom a t’sea wit’t’rest a t’ship, Ah ‘spect. An’ now Ah gotsa giant hold t’rattle around in,” he said, gesturing to the cabins behind him. 

“Dunno wot all t’do wit’et.”

The cat nodded as he took up a spot on the railing beside Rahkus. The human noted the cat stayed on his right where he could see best. It was right gentlemanly if he was doing it on purpose, Rahkus supposed.

“Well, there’s plenty of stuff you can borrow until you get some stuff of yer own. Blankets and grooming things and the like. And you can spend your take on whatever you like once you get some. I’m sure Lady Lei Lei would love to tour you around town to get some proper clothes for jockeying and looking good at competitions.”

Rahkus scowled and gave a sort of huff through his nose as he settled down with his forearms on the railing.

“Aw, give her a chance,” the cat said with a sort of mock pleading in his tone. “I expect you’re not the most comfortable with folks as tall as she is, but she’s got the best eye for sharp dressing on this whole mountain. She won’t steer you wrong.”

“No, s’not t’at,” Rahkus said before he thought. He stopped and pondered for a bit. He wanted to just tell the cat off for all this madness, though every instinct in him screamed at him not to. There lay danger. But… the cat had let him speak his piece before. And that he could leave if he wished, so there was no reason not to try. Right?

“T’at is t’say…” he said slowly. “S’jockeyin’ ye keep on aboot. S’No sense innet.”

Eric cocked a furry eyebrow — and an ear — in what Rahkus thought was a look of confusion. Rahkus huffed, annoyed.

“If ye wanted me fer a clown, Ah coould understan’t’at. An’ et might even be’a good life, Ah suppose. But iffen ye want m’mind onnet, Ah’d rat’er ye jist say so’n be done wit’all t’is jockeyin’ jest.”

Eric pulled his head up and his whiskers came forward. It was like when the ship’s cats got water in the face. Sort of an indignant surprise. His ears moved on their own, one going to the side, then the other to the front, then reversed. He opened his mouth a couple times only to close it again.

“You think I’ve been putting you on about being a jockey?” the flustered cat eventually managed.

“A’course,” Rahkus answered, a bit more confident but also irritated. “Racin’s a royal’s sport. Ah’ve only stolen ponies en port fer a lark. Yer jist ‘aving a jest offa me, t’be sure.”

“I’m not,” Eric answered with both ears off to the side. It made him look like an owl. Or leastways what Rahkus had always heard owls looked like.

“T’en why ye be showin’ me ‘round t’yer mates t’fawn o’er, eh?”

The cat scowled, looking more confused. Rahkus wondered if his whiskers could get further forward.

“I was introducing you to your coworkers. Yer new crew. So you know their names? And they know yours? If you’re going to stay here and jock—”

The pirate scoffed and waved the idea off. “Why would ye t’ink Ah coold jockey?”

“Well… you’re small,” Eric said like he didn’t know what to say. And then he clapped his mouth shut looking like he knew it had been the wrong thing.

Rahkus shot a venomous glare at the cat.

“Ye don’t say?” Rahkus snarled. He crossed his arms on the railing and dropped his head into them. 

Out of the corner of his good eye, Rahkus could see the cat hang his head like a struck dog. 

“Sorry, I—”

“Don’t,” the pirate cut the stable master off. “Of all t’unsettlin’ t’ings aboot t’is place, et’s t’lord bot’erin’ o’er me. ‘T’ain’t natural.”

Eric scowled, looking flustered about what to say. He kept quiet while his ears swiveled about. Rahkus watched him side-eyed but eventually tired of the cat’s fumbling about. He huffed in annoyance. A bone-weary tiredness that came up all of a sudden. He remembered that he hadn’t slept since being back in the damned British brig two days ago. It felt like forever ago now.

“Ye an’ et all don’t make no sense ‘ere,” he eventually sighed. “If et ain’t hell er feyland.”

Eric cocked a curious ear at him. Rahkus sighed again, even more heavily, and sunk deeper into his crossed arms on the railing.

“An’ Ah still dinnea understand,” he added haltingly. “Ah dinnea understand why Ah’m ‘ere. Why t’at damned British cur wot took m’ship’n me crew came ‘ere t’t’is land’a witchcraft’r fey’r who knows wot t’leave me ‘ere wit’chee. T’save me. ‘Stead’a takin’ me t’hang wit’t’rest ovvem. R’why yer makin’ such a fuss over me. Gettin’me fed up’n signed ont’yer daft crew a demons’r fair folk’r wot s’ever ye are. Getting me a room wot’s finer’n any stateroom ovva British lord’n so on. Lettin’ me speak m’piece’n carin’ fer m’fears’n such.”

Rahkus tried to muster a suspicious glare at the cat, but he was too tired.

“Et don’t make no sense t’at ye or yer fool friend t’British captain’d take time an work oot’a yer lives t’save t’likes a me’n fawn over me like ye ‘ave. Leastways not jist b’cause yer guilt-ridden o’er ‘ow yer own crown treats pirates. Et makes no sense.”

“None a’tall,” he added forcefully. 

He was curious how far the cat would let him go in speaking his mind. He was also too weary to bother hiding his thoughts on this alien world or the… people?… in it.

The cat demon looked at him hard for a long time. For a while, Rahkus watched him right back. The cat’s face — especially his ears and whiskers — danced with his thoughts. It was like Rahkus could see him thinking things over. Looking first curious with ears up and forward and whiskers up. Then thoughtful with one ear off to the side. Then something like realization and maybe sadness or annoyance. Both ears went off to the side in that owl way, and there was something different about his muzzle that Rahkus didn’t know how to describe.

The lycan sighed.

“I know new worlds are strange and unsettling. Even though I’ve been here for literally longer than I can remember, I wasn’t originally from here. All I can say is this  _ is  _ just another world, like yours, but we have different peoples, different technologies, and different standards of behavior. And then there’s this ranch, where I try to do things different — and I hope better — than this world. Where folks’re treated better than down there in town. Where everyone actually  _ is _ equal, rather than it just being something the powers that be talk about. Plus…”

The cat drifted off in his rambling when he noticed Rahkus was giving him an unconvinced look. 

Rahkus took the opportunity to snort his skepticism.

The stable master had already explained that this place was for raising horses and crops and the like, Rahkus assumed for sale, so he wasn’t buying some song and dance about this place being about something other than making money. That’s what lords and their interests were about. Probably didn’t matter what world a body was in. 

He said as much, and did so while looking away into the middle distance. But he kept a watch out of the corner of his eye for the cat demon’s reaction. Eric’s ears did another bit of dancing around before he sighed again. He looked down for a spell before looking back up. 

“I hope at some point you will trust me and this place, but I don’t expect it. And… If it puts your mind at ease to think about what I get out of the deal, know that you will make a  _ very _ valuable jockey.”

Rahkus scowled at this. Then scoffed again.

“The rule here for competitions is every horse who competes must be ridden. Including avatars. And the riders must be adults. Given your…  _ size _ … you will make an ideal jockey,” Eric explained. 

Rahkus huffed. “Yer dwarfs ain’t much bigger’n me.”

“Not in height, but you are considerably  _ lighter _ than they are,” Eric pressed on. “Even if you’re shit at riding, so long as you can stay in the saddle through an entire race or competition and you don’t throw off the avatars too badly, you are likely to win a lot more in comp purses than even our skilled dwarf riders. Simply because of how light you are compared to them. Most of them are double my weight despite their height.”

“S’why don’t ye ride em, t’en?” Rahkus asked, looking up. He still had his back up about what the cat had said and maybe jesting with him about this whole jockeying thing, but he was also curious.

This time Eric huffed.

“Just like there’s a taboo about horse lycans working with horse animals, there’s something of a taboo about lycans of any sort riding horses. It’s one of those things that ‘just isn’t done’ in polite society, though no one really talks about it or why.”

“But’che been ridin’ all t’time since Ah got ‘ere,” Rahkus observed with a raised eyebrow.

“Yeah, but it’s somewhat scandalous,” Eric admitted with an eyeroll. “I can get away with plenty for being a retired admiral of the navy and the lord steward up here, plus I’ve got a reputation for being eccentric, but I try not to push it too much where it’s not necessary. And competition riding’s not one of those areas.”

Rahkus mulled this over. It made sense a lord not wanting to look too out of place. Maybe the cat wasn’t lying about the jockeying.

“S’wot sorts a competitions ye be wantin’ me t’ride for ye for?”

The cat seemed to brighten up at this. Maybe it was because he thought Rahkus was convinced this wasn’t a jest, or because the stable master just liked to talk. Rahkus didn’t know. It was probably both, and the cat did like to talk.

“Races; trotting, gallop, and barrel races. And jumping and cross country competitions. Maybe eventually the Grand Prix for those events. There are others too — dressage, cutting, reining, pleasure, and trail — but those require more nuanced skills from the rider that will take time to learn. And the weight of the rider isn’t all that important.”

The cat demon started carrying on about the different avatars that Rahkus was likely to ride in these competitions. Apparently most of the water avatars — the púcaí as far as Rahkus was concerned — were big competitors and brought in a lot of money in winnings. Eric described them in what seemed to the pirate to be way more detail than was needed. But that seemed to be what the cat did. He talked. 

Rahkus sighed and settled in to listen. More or less.


	15. No judgement in this particular hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a long day of facing new, strange things at every turn, Rahkus is introduced with possibly the strangest thing; buggery's no sin in the cat demon's strange world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER: loneliness; cursing; gay ponies; discussion of sin, homosexuality, puritanical mores, hell; religious references; indirect references to rape, murder
> 
> Estimated reading time: 18 mins

Eric did indeed like talking.

The shadows had gotten long and direct sunlight had long since left the ground inside the courtyard while he carried on. When he eventually realized the little man on his left had stopped asking questions, after a long description of the usual schedule of life in the main lodge and on the ranch, Eric fell silent.

The little pirate had a far-away look in his one green eye as he distractedly tracked the movements of the residents and employees down below. 

Eric kept a curious ear tracking the little man, but knew the look of one numbed and overwhelmed by new, alien surroundings well enough. Rahkus had almost said as much earlier in his mini-rant about how nothing about Eric or the ranch made any sense. Add to that his talk about not knowing what to do with all the room in his flat — modest though it was — and Eric had to assume the little man was feeling existentially lost. 

Having been there himself way back when, Eric had the urge to try to console the little man. Past experience stayed the impulse however. He would keep to himself about it unless or until Rahkus wanted to discuss it.

The appearance of the two tiny equines, Tony and Ande, drew the pirate’s more focused attention. He watched as the pair trotted into the courtyard from the direction of the quasi-townsquare and were waylaid by Shra-Va, the odd, multiheaded avatar who served as the resident socialite. He was always engaged in talking to folks. Given his seven heads, he could carry on a good many conversations at once.

After a brief chat, the tan and white pair trotted off together toward one of the ground-level apartments near the corner across from where Rahkus was. Tony pulled on a length of rope attached to the door handle with his teeth. The lower half of the door swung open and the pair ducked inside. The door swung shut, only to have the top half swing open after a moment.

“Ponies get rooms too, t’en, aye?” asked the pirate with a sort of hollow non-amusement.

“Talking ones do,” Eric offered with a bit of playfulness in his voice. “If they want it. Same with the avatars. A few do like being indoors, like Az and his cottage, or those two. But most prefer to be out in the pasture or among their element.”

Rahkus chuckled and shook his head. “An’ ‘ere Ah t’ought Ah were special.”

Eric opened his mouth to respond, but then faltered and shut it again, going back to looking down at the courtyard below. Rahkus apparently noticed this verbal fumbling and found it amusing. Or at least worth another dry chuckle.

They fell silent again and just stared down into the courtyard. Things went on and folks down below cycled in and out. The shadows got a bit longer as evening wore on. 

After some time, the little pony pair came back out from their first floor apartment and seemed to find a nice patch of grass ringing the garden area. They settled down in the grass facing in opposite directions, but leaning their backs and sides together. They almost looked like a pair of cats curled up next to each other. They nibbled grass and looked like they were carrying on a conversation. Rahkus watched them with more focus than he had any of the other goings on down below.

“Ye said t’ere’s ‘orse lycan. Wot ‘ave a mind like t’at’un?” the pirate asked with a nod in Tony’s direction.

“Yep,” Eric confirmed.

“Tony e’er t’ink t’take up wit’ them?” Rahkus asked with calculated disinterest. “T’be wit’ some ovvis own kind instead a stayin’ ‘ere where ‘e ain’t like others? Even those wot look like’im?”

“I dunno,” Eric admitted. “You’ll have to ask him. I dunno where the nearest herd of horse lycan is. Though I expect he’d miss Ande a good deal if he were to leave. Or maybe Ande would go too.”

Rahkus nodded absently. He resettled his head down into his crossed arms over the railing and sighed heavily.

“Wot’che ‘spect we’ll do t’morrow? Me’n t’em two?”

“They start early in the morning, shortly after dawn,” the lycan said, stretching his arms, neck, and back after so long leaning against the — for him — low rail. 

“You should meet ‘em down there by the patio after breakfast. Since alfalfa’s no good to you, you’ll need to carry food with you. Campbell,” Eric cast a gauging look at the pirate as he mentioned the boar chef, “makes up lunches folks can carry around with them as they work. He sets them out with signs saying what’s in them.”

Remembering the human’s apparent illiteracy, he added, “You can ask folks to read stuff for you. Plus Campbell usually draws pictures, but he’s not good at it. Not reading’s pretty common here. Lunches are often things like a cold meat pie or some dried fish or meat or a hunk of cheese and bread. Usually some fruit or other and always a flask of cider. Be sure to bring the bag and the flask back to the kitchen.”

Rahkus nodded, still absently watching the two small ponies below. Eric looked at him, then down at the equine pair, and eventually back up at the pirate. 

There was something on the little man’s mind, but Eric didn’t know what it all might be. Or rather, he had many ideas of what it might be, and wasn’t sure which one it was. Likely a sense of being lost and on strange shores, but also — if his earlier question about if Tony wanted to be with those of his own kind was any indication — an engulfing feeling of loneliness. There was no one here like him, though it was likely there had been very few people like him in his own world either. There were humans in this world, but none of them knew his world and he would very likely never see it again. He had been effectively ripped from his world without any control over the matter, and this world was strange to him in so many ways. So much so that his best guesses were that he was trapped in some sort of mythological realm. It was likely disorienting in the extreme if not downright terrifying.

“You want to get supper?” Eric offered. If nothing, the man had seemed to be excited about food.

Rahkus raised his head up from his arms enough to shake it. “Not much a’hungered, strange t’say.”

“Wot’s t’rest a t’morrow t’be?” the pirate asked quickly as he settled back down into his arms. Eric took this as a prompt to keep talking, even if he doubted the pirate was overly anxious about the next day’s activities.

“They’ll likely take you off on one of their tracks ‘round the ranch. They walk the ranch everyday to get around to all of the pastures to do their scouting of the mares. They time their tracks so they can wind up alongside the hay fields a couple times a day so they can get a bite to eat. It’s hungry business, their work. They walk a lot of kilometers each day, plus they get up to other… _exertions_ … together as well.”

“Like wot?” the pirate asked absently.

“A lot of fucking, as far as I’m aware,” the cat said with a bit of a chuckle in his tone.

Rahkus looked up suddenly in apparent surprise.

“That’s what they were doin’ when we found them earlier in the tractor sheds,” Eric explained. “But since Tony’s spending all day smelling mares in season, I don’t begrudge him it. Smelling heat without a chance t’rut will frustrate anyone, regardless of species, I’d expect.”

“So… if they go and disappear on you, don’t go looking for them,” the lycan added with a bit of a wink.

The pirate, now standing mostly up from the railing, cast a headcocked glance down at the pair of ponies on the grass and then back up to Eric. His eyebrows knitted closer together all the while.

“Aren’t t’ey… blokes?”

“Yeah, they’re both stallions. Why?”

Silence stretched as Rahkus started changing colors like pale-skinned humans tended to when suffering from some strong emotion. Eric was pretty sure they weren’t aware of it. The little man’s face was now mottled red and white and his good eye was wide. The altitude and angle of the eyebrows suggested surprise and worry.

“What?” Eric broke the silence with a raised eyebrow of his own.

Rahkus dropped his gaze back down to Tony and Ande below in the courtyard and then quickly away. Eric could see the one-eyed man’s good green eye darting around, probably in thought, but possibly in worry. Eventually, the pirate looked up again. His expression was wary with bushy red eyebrows pursed, but his tone was curious.

“Ye dinnea stop’em when ye found ‘em havin’ a go at each ot’er? In t’shed?”

“Of course I didn’t stop them!” Eric snorted as his ears tracked to the side. “Askin’ a pair t’stop mid-coitus to come out to meet a new coworker, is just… Well. It doesn’t set the right tone, at the very least.”

The pirate hunched over the railing, pointedly not looking down into the courtyard but not at the stablemaster either. He shifted position often and fidgeted. He was also giving off the smell of nerves-stress. Anxiety but not yet to the fear level.

“Ye won’t punish’em for et?” he eventually asked, still without properly looking up. Eric cocked a perplexed ear forward while leaving the other askance.

“Certainly not! I mean, I might need to talk to them about it if they spend too much time at it when they should be working, but why would—” 

Eric stopped, remembering Captain Johns from the night before. He had said that men loving men was a sin in whatever religion he followed. Perhaps he and Rahkus followed the same religion? They had both talked of witchcraft and devils, so... maybe?

“There’s nothing wrong with stallions taking on with stallions,” he said pointedly. “Nor men with men, nor ladies with ladies, nor much else you can think of. S’long as everyone’s of age and of like mental faculties and in agreement. I take no issue with it.”

Rakhus gave a surreptitious look. It was that sort of look you gave someone you didn’t fully believe, but you didn’t want to show your own hand enough to press them on it.

Eric shifted both ears and whiskers forward to focus on the human’s emotional tells. In addition to his general unwashed human odor, Rahkus smelled of stress and his posture was one of agitation. His breathing was more rapid and if Eric focused hard enough, he could hear that the man’s heartbeat was offering up a good tattoo. 

“D’you?” Eric eventually asked. He hoped the question might draw the man out from whatever discomfort this topic had got him into. It was also relevant to know if the human was against males who took up with other males since he’d be working with a male couple. And the gods knew there were plenty more besides just the two little equines here on the ranch.

“Buggery’s a hangin’ crime,” the pirate finally answered in a careful, quiet voice.

That was, of course, not an answer to the question Eric had asked. However, even though he had never heard the term “buggery” before, he had heard enough in the context and tone of Rahkus’ response to recognize it as an answer to why the pirate was suddenly so nervous and cautious. Which in itself suggested things about the man.

“Well, s’not a crime here,” the lycan eventually answered with a shrug. 

“Leastways not up here on the ranch. Talking about it’s a censuring offense down in town. Speaking of it might even get you put in the stocks for a stretch. Not doing it though, odd t’say,” he added with an ear cocked off to the side. 

“They don’t seem to care what folks _do_ regarding matters of the heart and or flesh, but they won’t let you _talk_ about nothing besides ‘proper’ cub-making activities. And even then, they don’t want to hear much about that either. But up here, you’ll find no quarrel over talk of it nor doing it, regardless what combination suits your fancy.”

Rahkus cast an odd look at Eric. Something between suspicion and incomprehension. 

“Like I said,” Eric offered with another shrug. “My ranch is something of an asylum for those who don’t fit what the world expects. Whether that’s a talking pony wanting to live without hiding what he is,” he said, gesturing in Tony’s direction. “Or a dwarf who wants to work at growing things or riding horses instead of working stone deep in a mountain, or folks who love those of their own sex or both or neither.”

There was no answer nor immediate reaction from the little pirate. He had stopped his fidgeting earlier and rested both forearms on the railing to stare thoughtfully into his hands. His posture wasn’t so tense as before, but it was closed off.

“Ye got me?” Eric pressed after some moments of silence.

The pirate, still peering intently at his hands, eventually nodded.

“Still look like you’re chewing over it,” Eric observed. Rahkus nodded again, clearly still in thought. When he eventually spoke, the measured delivery suggested he was still having difficulty digesting the information.

“Buggery’s a hangin’ crime back ‘ome,” he repeated. “N’er rightly knew why. Save fer et bein’ a sin according t’t’men a t’cloth. N’er rightly knew why t’at wuz eit’er. Always seemed t’me t’ere’s worse sins wot don’t damn ye t’hell...”

“But here you are?” Eric offered, thinking he saw where the little man’s mind was going. Rahkus nodded, still ruminating. 

“Dinnea expect a devil t’tell me buggery ain’t no bot’er. T’fair folk…?” the pirate looked up in calculation at the lycan before turning back to the courtyard. “Mebbe.”

Eric waited. “But…?” he fished after the silence pressed on.

“Ah always expected t’wind oop en hell. Cuz’a m’piratin’ an’ sinnin’ an’all. But… But none a’tis’s wot Ah expected,” Rahkus continued. His voice was strained, but sounded more tired than confused. 

“T’ere’s no fire’n torment’n t’like if et were hell. T’ere ain’t even no judgement, which is t’damnedest ovvet all,” he looked up thoughtfully for a moment. “Iffen buggery’s no crime t’ye, an’ ye don’t ‘ave no quarrel wit’ a pirate, wot’s yer crew articles?”

Eric stood up straighter at the railing beside the little man. He cocked an ear sideways, then straightened it, then cocked the other thoughtfully.

“Crew articles?” he eventually asked, finally being the one to not recognize a phrase.

“Wot’s yer law here?” the pirate clarified.

“Oh. We’ve got a listing of them in the manifest. I can read them to you if you like?” the ranch master offered. Rahkus shook his head, demurring.

“Wot’s t’short version?”

“Mostly it comes down to; you can do as you like so long as you don’t do any harm to others, and that includes the animals,” Eric summarized. “And other basic things; no stealing, don’t withhold prize money or food stuffs from the common pool, don’t damage common goods. Physical abuses of the other residents, ranch hands, and horses’r cattle won’t be tolerated. Most who do are asked to leave after sufficient warning.”

“Any who take any sort of sexual advantage of another, either by force’r by exploit…” at this, Eric growled and lashed his tail, apparently surprising the little man if his widened eye was any indication. 

“Well, they don’t often get the _opportunity_ to be asked to leave. If you understand.”

The pirate did. He nodded vigorously, but then his focus fell away into a contemplative frown. Eric got the impression he would be chewing on the law information for a while, given the man’s lack of focus and the thoughtful choreography of his face.

“Ye, ah… _maroon_ … t’em wot force’emselves on t’te’m wot don’t want‘em?” he eventually asked carefully.

“That’s one way to put it,” Eric said with a warning growl. “Lady Lei Lei in particular tends to make sure they find the quick path off the plateau if she gets a hold of them.”

“T’one wot don’t come wit’a flyin’ horse, Ah take et?”

“Aye.”

The human mulled this over. Eric did notice Rahkus looked thoughtful rather than concerned. 

“Dunno if t’at’s summat wot’d happen en hell’r not, truth t’tell,” the man eventually announced. Eric cocked a confused ear at him.

“What is hell anyway?” the lycan asked suddenly, leaning down on the railing beside the otherworlder human. “Both you and Captain Johns have mentioned it. You said you expected to go there, but I’ve only got the vaguest idea of what it is supposed to be in the legends of your world.”

“S’where ye go when ye die iffen ye ‘aven’t come free’a yer sins, accordin’ t’t’men a t’cloth,” Rahkus rattled off with a sigh. “S’where t’evil an’ sinners wot ne’er saw justice en life’r punished fer t’eir evil. Ah were ne’er clear on who was t’one doin’ th’ punishin’ — the Lord’r t’Devil — but t’men a t’cloth were all clear on wot ‘appens t’ere. Tormentin’ an’ burnin’ an’ pain’n all like t’at.”

“But you’re not dead,” Eric observed.

“Aye,” Rahkus agreed. “An’ iffen yer crew articles be set against causin’ hurt an’ against t’em wot force ‘emselves on t’ose wot don’t want’em… An’ ye ain’t bot’ered b’buggery’r pirates… An’ ye give ponies’n t’likes a me a grand cabin’n vittles like ye ‘ave… ‘Spose et might well be ‘eaven.”

The lycan at least recognized that word. A lot of myths and legends had something that was called that. He chuffed in amusement.

“Well, it’s not heaven, but I’d like to think it’s not half bad. The dwarves tell me I’m working at making Fólkvangr, but I’ve never been.”

Rahkus gave this a perplexed look. “Wot’s t’at?”

“S’far as I’ve been told, it’s a sort of mythical afterlife some dwarves believe in, though I expect it’s just another world,” Eric explained, gesturing in the direction of the mountain. 

“Meadows of plenty where warriors slain in honorable battle go after they die. They train for the next war between the gods during the day, and eat and drink their fill at every meal in camaraderie and friendship.”

Rahkus cocked his head in thought, then gave a tacit nod.

“Aye, Ah suppose t’at sounds aboot right from wot ye’ve been sayin’ aboot t’is patch’a madness ye got ‘ere. ‘Cept fer t’warriors trainin’ fer t’next war.”

Eric said nothing, but his ears and whiskers were piqued forward. Rahkus cocked his head again, looking uncertain.

“Aye?”

Eric stood up away from leaning on the railing and stretched, reaching up as high as he could while standing on the tips of his toes. Even his tail reached out as far as it could go. When he settled, he looked off at the setting sun on the horizon, back down towards the now-glowing lights of the galley, and then back to Rahkus.

“You want to get some dinner?” he asked, nodding in the direction of the hall.

Rahkus straightened up and looked first from the stable master to the distant hall and back again. He quirked an eyebrow, then stood upright and stretched too.

“Aye.”


End file.
